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ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA
ON VIRGINITY
[Translated by the Rev. William Moore, M.A., Rector of Appleton, Late
Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.]
INTRODUCTION.
THE object of this treatise is to create in its readers a passion for the
life according to excellence. There are many distractions(1), to use the
word of the Divine Apostle, incident to the secular life; and so this
treatise would suggest, as a necessary door of entrance to the holier life,
the calling of Virginity; seeing that, while it is not easy in the
entanglements of this secular life to find quiet for that of Divine
contemplation, those on the other hand who have bid farewell to its
troubles can with promptitude, and without distraction, pursue, assiduously
their higher studies. Now, whereas all advice is in itself weak, and mere
words of exhortation will not make the task of recommending what is
beneficial easier to any one, unless he has first given a noble aspect to
that which he urges on his hearer, this discourse will accordingly begin
with the praises of Virginity; the exhortation will come at the end;
moreover, as the beauty in anything gains lustre by the contrast with its
opposite, it is requisite that some mention should be made of the vexations
of everyday life. Then it will be quite in the plan of this work to
introduce a sketch of the contemplative life, and to prove the
impossibility of any one attaining it who feel's the world's anxieties. In
the devotee bodily desire has become weak; and so there will follow an
inquiry as to the true object of desire, for which (and which only) we have
received from our Maker our power of desiring. When this has received all
possible illustration, it will seem to follow naturally that we should
consider some method to attain it; and the true, virginity, which is free
from any stain of sin, will be found to fit such a purpose. So all the
intermediate part of the discourse, while it seems to look elsewhere, will
be really tending to the praises of this virginity. All the particular
rules obeyed by the followers of this high calling will, to avoid
prolixity, be omitted here; the exhortation in the discourse will be
introduced only in general terms, and for cases of wide application; but,
in a way, particulars will be here included, and so nothing important will
be overlooked, while prolixity is avoided. Each of us, too, is inclined to
embrace some course of life with the greater enthusiasm, when he sees
personalities who have already gained distinction in it; we have therefore
made the requisite mention of saints who have gained their glory in
celibacy. But further than this; the examples we have in biographies cannot
stimulate to the attainment of excellence, so much as a living voice and an
example which is still working for good; and so we have alluded to that
most godly bishop(2), our father in God, who himself alone could be the
master in such instructions. He will not indeed be mentioned by name, but
by certain indications we shall say in cipher that he is meant. Thus, too,
future readers will not think our advice unmeaning, when the candidate for
this life is told to school himself by recent masters. But let them first
fix their attention only on this: what such a master ought to be; then let
them choose for their guidance those who have at any time by God's grace
been raised up to be champions of this system of excellence; for either
they will find what they seek, or at all events will be no longer ignorant
what it ought to be.
CHAPTER I.
THE holy look of virginity is precious indeed in the judgment of all
who make purity the test of beauty; but it belongs to those alone whose
struggles to gain this object of a noble love are favoured and helped by
the grace of God. Its praise is heard at once in the very name which goes
with it; "Uncorrupted(3)" is the word commonly said of it, and this shows
the kind of purity that is in it; thus we can measure by its equivalent
term the height of this gift, seeing that amongst the many results of
virtuous endeavour this alone has been honoured with the title of the thing
that is uncorrupted. And if we must extol with laudations this gift from
the great God, the words of His Apostle are sufficient in its praise; they
are few, but they throw into the background all extravagant laudations; he
only styles as "holy and without blemish(4)" her who has this grace for her
ornament. Now if the achievement of this saintly virtue consists in making
one "without blemish and holy," and these epithets are adopted in their
first and fullest force to glorify the incorruptible Deity, what greater
praise of virginity can there be than thus to be shown in a manner deifying
those who share in her pure mysteries, so that they become partakers of His
glory Who is in actual truth the only Holy and Blameless One; their purity
and their incorruptibility being the means of bringing them into
relationship with Him? Many who write lengthy laudations in detailed
treatises, with the view of adding something to the wonder of this grace,
unconsciously defeat, in my opinion, their own end; the fulsome manner in
which they amplify their subject brings its credit into suspicion. Nature's
greatnesses have their own way of striking with admiration; they do not
need the pleading of words: the sky, for instance, or the sun, or any other
wonder of the universe. In the business of this lower world words certainly
act as a basement, and the skill of praise does impart a look of
magnificence; so much so, that mankind are apt to suspect as the result of
mere art the wonder produced by panegyric. So the one sufficient way of
praising virginity will be to show that that virtue is above praise, and to
evince our admiration of it by our lives rather than by our words. A man
who takes this theme for ambitious praise has the appearance of supposing
that one drop of his own perspiration will make an appreciable increase of
the boundless ocean, if indeed he believes, as he does, that any human
words can give more dignity to so rare a grace; he must be ignorant either
of his own powers or of that which he attempts to praise.
CHAPTER II.
DEEP indeed will be the thought necessary to understand the surpassing
excellence of this grace. It is comprehended in the idea of the Father
incorrupt; and here at the outset is a paradox, viz. that virginity is
found in Him, Who has a Son and yet without passion has begotten Him. It is
included too in the nature of this Only-begotten God, Who struck the first
note of all this moral innocence; it shines forth equally in His pure and
passionless generation. Again a paradox; that the Son should be known to us
by virginity. It is seen, too, in the inherent and incorruptible purity of
the Holy Spirit; for when you have named the pure and incorruptible you
have named virginity. It accompanies the whole supramundane existence;
because of its passionlessness it is always present with the powers above;
never separated from aught that is Divine, it never touches the opposite of
this. All whose instinct and will have found their level in virtue are
beautified with this perfect purity of the uncorrupted state; all who are
ranked in the opposite class of character are what they are, and are called
so, by reason of their fall from purity. What force of expression, then,
will be adequate to such a grace? How can there be no cause to fear lest
the greatness of its intrinsic value should be impaired by the efforts of
any one's eloquence? The estimate of it which he will create will be less
than that which his hearers had before. It will be well, then, to omit all
laudation in this case; we cannot lift words to the height of our theme. On
the contrary, it is possible to be ever mindful of this gift of God; and
our lips may always speak of this blessing; that, though it is the
property of spiritual existence and of such singular excellence, yet by the
love of God it has been bestowed on those who have received their life from
the will of the flesh and from blood; that, when human nature has been
based by passionate inclinations, it stretches out its offer of purity like
a hand to raise it up again and make it look above. This, I think, was the
reason why our Master, Jesus Christ Himself, the Fountain of all innocence,
did not come into the world by wedlock. It was, to divulge by the manner of
His Incarnation this great secret; that purity is the only complete
indication(5) of the presence of God and of His coming, and that no one can
in reality secure this for himself, unless he has altogether estranged
himself from the passions of the flesh. What happened in the stainless Mary
when the fulness of the Godhead which was in Christ shone out through her,
that happens in every soul that leads by rule the virgin life. No longer
indeed does the Master come with bodily presence; "we know Christ no longer
according to the flesh(6)"; but, spiritually, He dwells in us and brings
His Father with Him, as the Gospel somewhere(7) tells. Seeing, then, that
virginity means so much as this, that while it remains m Heaven with the
Father of spirits, and moves in the dance of the celestial powers, it
nevertheless stretches out hands for man's salvation; that while it is the
channel which draws down the Deity to share man's estate, it keeps wings
for man's desires to rise to heavenly things, and is a bond of union
between the Divine and human, by its mediation bringing into harmony these
existences so widely divided--what words could be discovered powerful
enough to reach this wondrous height? But still, it is monstrous to seem
like creatures without expression and without feeling; and we must choose
(if we are silent) one of two things; either to appear never to have felt
the special beauty of virginity, or to exhibit ourselves as obstinately
blind to all beauty: we have consented therefore to speak briefly about
this virtue, according to the wish of him who has assigned us this task,
and whom in all things we must obey. But let no one expect from us any
display of style; even if we wished it, perhaps we could not produce it,
for we are quite unversed in that kind of writing. Even if we possessed
such power, we would not prefer the favour of the few to the edification of
the many. A writer of sense should have, I take it, for his chiefest object
not to be admired above all other writers, but to profit both himself and
them, the many.
CHAPTER III.
WOULD indeed that some profit might come to myself from this effort! I
should have undertaken this labour with the greater readiness, if I could
have hope of sharing, according to the Scripture, in the fruits of the
plough and the threshing-floor; the toil would then have been a pleasure.
As it is, this my knowledge of the beauty of virginity is in some sort vain
and useless to me, just as the corn is to the muzzled ox that treads(8) the
floor, or the water that streams from the precipice to a thirsty man when
he cannot reach it. Happy they who have still the power of choosing the
better way, and have not debarred themselves from it by engagements of the
secular life, as we have, whom a gulf now divides from glorious virginity:
no one can climb up to that who has once planted his foot upon the secular
life. We are but spectators of others' blessings and witnesses to the
happiness of another(9) class. Even if we strike out some fitting thoughts
about virginity, we shall not be better than the cooks and scullions who
provide sweet luxuries for the tables of the rich, without having any
portion themselves in What they prepare. What a blessing if it had been
otherwise, if we had not to learn the good by after-regrets! Now they are
the enviable ones, they succeed even beyond their prayers and their
desires, who have not put out of their power the enjoyment of these
delights. We are like those who have a wealthy society with which to
compare their own poverty, and so are all the more vexed and discontented
with their present lot. The more exactly we understand the riches of
virginity, the more we must bewail the other life; for we realize by this
contrast with better things, how poor it is. I do not speak only of the
future rewards in store for those who have lived thus excellently, but
those rewards also which they have while alive here; for if any one would
make up his mind to measure exactly the difference between the two courses,
he would find it well-nigh as great as that between heaven and earth. The
truth of this statement may be known by looking at actual facts.
But in writing this sad tragedy what will be a fit beginning? How shall
we really bring to view the evils common to life? All men know them by
experience, but somehow nature has contrived to blind the actual sufferers
so that they willingly ignore their condition. Shall we begin with its
choicest sweets? Well then, is not the sum total of all that is hoped for
in marriage to get delightful companionship? Grant this obtained; let us
sketch a marriage in every way most happy; illustrious birth, competent
means, suitable ages, the very flower of the prime of life, deep affection,
the very best that each can think of the other(1), that sweet rivalry of
each wishing to surpass the other in loving; in addition, popularity,
power, wide reputation, and everything else. But observe that even beneath
this array of blessings the fire of an inevitable pain is smouldering. I do
not speak of the envy that is always springing up against those of
distinguished rank, and the liability to attack which hangs over those who
seem prosperous, and that natural hatred of superiors shown by those who do
not share equally in the good fortune, which make these seemingly favoured
ones pass an anxious time more full of pain than pleasure. I omit that from
the picture, and will suppose that envy against them is asleep; although it
would not be easy to find a single life in which both these blessings were
joined, i.e. happiness above the common, and escape from envy. However, let
us, if so it is to be, suppose a married life free from all such trials;
and let us see if it is possible for those who live with such an amount of
good fortune to enjoy it. Why, what kind of vexation is left, you will ask,
when even envy of their happiness does not reach them? I affirm that this
very, thing, this sweetness that surrounds their lives is the spark which
kindles pain. They are human all the time, things weak and perishing they
have to look upon the tombs of their progenitors; and so pain is
inseparably bound up with their existence, if they have the least power of
reflection. This continued expectancy of death, realized by no sure tokens,
but hanging over them the terrible uncertainty of the future, disturbs
their present joy, clouding it over with the fear of what is coming. If
only, before experience comes, the results of experience could be learnt,
or if, when one has entered on this course, it were possible by some other
means of conjecture to survey the reality, then what a crowd of deserters
would run from marriage into the virgin life; what care and eagerness
never to be entangled in that retentive snare, where no one knows for
certain how the net galls till they have actually entered it! You would see
there, if only you could do it without danger, many contraries uniting;
smiles melting into tears, pain mingled with pleasure, death always hanging
by expectation over the children that are born, and putting a finger upon
each of the sweetest joys. Whenever the husband looks at the beloved face,
that moment the fear of separation accompanies the look. If he listens to
the sweet voice, the thought comes into his mind that some day he will not
hear it. Whenever he is glad with gazing on her beauty, then he shudders
most with the presentiment of mourning her loss. When he marks all those
charms which to youth are so precious and which the thoughtless seek for,
the bright eyes beneath the lids, the arching eyebrows, the cheek with its
sweet and dimpling smile, the natural red that blooms upon the lips, the
gold-bound hair shining in many-twisted masses on the head, and all that
transient grace, then, though he may be little given to reflection, he must
have this thought also in his inmost soul that some day all this beauty
will melt away and become as nothing, turned after all this show into
noisome and unsightly bones, which wear no trace, no memorial, no remnant
of that living bloom. Can he live delighted when he thinks of that? Can he
trust in these treasures which he holds as if they would be always his?
Nay, it is plain that he will stagger as if he were mocked by a dream, and
will have his faith in life shaken, and will look upon what he sees as no
longer his. You will understand, if you have a comprehensive view of things
as they are, that nothing in this life looks that which it is. It shows to
us by the illusions of our imagination one thing, instead of something
else. Men gaze open-mouthed at it, and it mocks them with hopes; for a
while it hides itself beneath this deceitful show; then all of a sudden in
the reverses of life it is revealed as something different from that which
men's hopes, conceived by its fraud in foolish hearts, had pictured. Will
life's sweetness seem worth taking delight in to him who reflects on this?
Will he ever be able really to feel it, so as to have joy in the goods he
holds? Will he not, disturbed by the constant fear of some reverse, have
the use without the enjoyment? I will but mention the portents, dreams,
omens, and such-like things which by a foolish habit of thought are taken
notice of, and always make men fear the worst. But her time of labour comes
upon the young wife; and the occasion is regarded not as the bringing of a
child into the world, but as the approach of death; in bearing it is
expected that she will die; and, indeed, often this sad presentiment is
true, and before they spread the birthday feast, before they taste any of
their expected joys, they have to change their rejoicing into lamentation.
Still in love's fever, still at the height of their passionate affection,
not yet having grasped life's sweetest gifts, as in the vision of a dream,
they are suddenly torn away from all they possessed. But what comes next?
Domestics, like: conquering foes, dismantle the bridal chamber; they deck
it for the funeral, but it is death's(2) room now; they make the useless
wailings(3) and beatings of the hands. Then there is the memory of former
days, curses on those who advised the marriage, recriminations against
friends who did not stop it; blame thrown on parents whether they be alive
or dead, bitter outbursts against human destiny, arraigning of the whole
course of nature, complaints and accusations even against the Divine
government; war within the man himself, and fighting with those who would
admonish; no repugnance to the most shocking words and acts. In some this
state of mind continues, and their reason is more completely swallowed up
by grief; and their tragedy has a sadder ending, the victim not enduring to
survive the calamity. But rather than this let us suppose a happier case.
The danger of childbirth is past; a child is born to them, the very image
of its parents' beauty. Are the occasions for grief at all lessened
thereby? Rather they are increased; for the parents retain all their
former fears, and feel in addition those on behalf of the child, lest
anything should happen to it in its bringing up; for instance a bad
accident, or by some turn of misfortunes a sickness, a fever(4), any
dangerous disease. Both parents share alike in these; but who could recount
the special anxieties of the wife? We omit the most obvious, which all can
understand, the weariness of pregnancy, the danger in childbirth, the cares
of nursing, the tearing of her heart in two for her offspring, and, if she
is the mother of many, the dividing of her soul into as many parts as she
has children; the tenderness with which she herself feels all that is
happening to them. That is well understood by every one. But the oracle of
God tells us that she is not her own mistress, but finds her resources only
in him whom wedlock has made her lord; and so, if she be for ever so short
a time left alone, she feels as if she were separated from her head and can
ill bear it; she even takes this short absence of her husband to be the
prelude to her widowhood; her fear makes her at once give up all hope;
accordingly her eyes, filled with terrified suspense, are always fixed upon
the door; her ears are always busied with what others are whispering; her
heart, stung with her fears, is well-nigh bursting even before any bad(5)
news has arrived; a noise in the doorway, whether fancied or real, acts as
a messenger of ill, and on a sudden shakes her very soul; most likely all
outside is well, and there is no cause to fear at all; but her fainting
spirit is quicker than any message, and turns her fancy from good tidings
to despair. Thus even the most favoured live, and they are not altogether
to be envied; their life is not to be compared to the freedom of virginity.
Yet this hasty sketch has omitted many of the more distressing details.
Often this young wife too, just wedded, still brilliant in bridal grace,
still perhaps blushing when her bridegroom enters, and shyly stealing
furtive glances at him, when passion is all the more intense because
modesty prevents it being shown, suddenly has to take the name of a poor
lonely widow and be called all that is pitiable. Death comes in an instant
and changes that bright creature in her white and rich attire into a black-
robed mourner. He takes off the bridal ornaments and clothes her with the
colours of bereavement. There is darkness in the once cheerful room, and
the waiting-women sing their long dirges. She hates her friends when they
try to soften her grief; she will not take food, she wastes away, and her
soul's deep dejection has a strong longing only for her death, a longing
which often lasts till it comes. Even supposing that time puts an end to
this sorrow, still another comes, whether she has children or not. If she
has, they are fatherless, and, as objects of pity themselves, renew the
memory of her loss. If she is childless, then the name of her lost husband
is rooted up, and this grief is greater than the seeming consolation. I
will say little of the other special sorrows of widowhood; for who could
enumerate them all exactly? She finds her enemies in her relatives. Some
actually take advantage of her affliction. Others exult over her loss, and
see with malignant joy the home failing to pieces, the insolence of the
servants, and the other distresses visible in such a case, of which there
are plenty. In consequence of these, many women are compelled to risk once
more the trial of the same things, not being able to endure this bitter
derision. As if they could revenge insults by increasing their own
sufferings! Others, remembering the past, will put up with anything rather
than plunge a second time into the like troubles. If you wish to learn all
the trials of this married life, listen to those women who actually know
it. How they congratulate those who have chosen from the first the virgin
life, and have not had to learn by experience about the better way, that
virginity is fortified against all these ills, that it has no orphan state,
no widowhood to mourn; it is always in the presence of the undying
Bridegroom; it has the offspring of devotion always to rejoice in; it sees
continually a home that is truly its own, furnished with every treasure
because the Master always dwells there; in this case death does not bring
separation, but union with Him Who is longed for; for when (a soul)
departs(6), then it is with Christ, as the Apostle says. But it is time,
now that we have examined on the one side the feelings of those whose lot
is happy, to make a revelation of other lives, where poverty and adversity
and all the other evils which men have to suffer are a fixed condition;
deformities, I mean, and diseases, and all other lifelong afflictions. He
whose life is contained in himself either escapes them altogether or can
bear them easily, possessing a collected mind which is not distracted from
itself; while he who shares himself with wife and child often has not a
moment to bestow even upon regrets for his own condition, because anxiety
for his dear ones fills his heart. But it is superfluous to dwell upon that
which every one knows. If to What seems prosperity such pain and weariness
is bound, what may we not expect of the opposite condition? Every
description which attempts to represent it to our view will fall short of
the reality. Yet perhaps we may in a very few words declare the depths of
its misery. Those whose lot is contrary to that which passes as prosperous
receive their sorrows as well from causes contrary to that. Prosperous
lives are marred by the expectancy, or the presence, of death; but the
misery of these is that death delays his coming. These lives then are
widely divided by opposite feelings; although equally without hope, they
converge to the same end. So many-sided, then, so strangely different are
the ills with which marriage supplies the world. There is pain always,
whether children are born, or can never be expected, whether they live, or
die. One abounds in them but has not enough means for their support;
another feels the want of an heir to the great fortune he has toiled for,
and regards as a blessing the other's misfortune each of them, in fact,
wishes for that very thing which he sees the other regretting. Again, one
man loses by death a much-loved(7) son; another has a reprobate son alive;
both equally to be pitied, though the one mourns over the death, the other
over the life, of his boy. Neither will I do more than mention how sadly
and disastrously family jealousies and quarrels, arising from real or
fancied causes, end. Who could go completely into all those details? If you
would know what a network of these evils human life is, you need not go
back again to those old stories which have furnished subjects to dramatic
poets. They are regarded as myths on account of their shocking extravagance
there are in them murders and eating of children husband-murders, murders
of mothers and brothers, incestuous unions, and every sort of disturbance
of nature; and yet the old chronicler begins the story which ends in such
horrors with marriage. But turning from all that, gaze only upon the
tragedies that are being enacted on this life's stage; it is marriage that
supplies mankind with actors there. Go to the lawcourts and read through
the laws there; then you will know the shameful secrets of marriage. Just
as when you hear a physician explaining various diseases, you understand
the misery of the human frame by learning the number and the kind of
sufferings it is liable to, so when you peruse the laws and read there the
strange variety of crimes in marriage to which their penalties are
attached, you will have a pretty accurate idea of its properties; for the
law does not provide remedies for evils which do not exist, any more than a
physician has a treatment for diseases which are never known.
CHAPTER IV.
BUT we need no lodger show in this narrow way the drawback of this
life, as if the number of its ills was limited to adulteries, dissensions,
and plots. I think we should take the higher and truer view, and say at
once that none of that evil in life, which is visible in all its business
and in all its pursuits, can have any hold over a man, if he will not put
himself in the fetters of this course. The truth of what we say will be
clear thus. A man who, seeing through the illusion with the eye of his
spirit purged, lifts himself above the struggling world, and, to use the
words of the Apostle, slights it all as but dung, in a way exiling himself
altogether from human life by his abstinence from marriage,--that man has
no fellowship whatever with the sins of mankind, such as avarice, envy,
anger, hatred, and everything of the kind. He has an exemption from all
this, and is in every way free and at peace; there is nothing in him to
provoke his neighbours' envy, because he clutches none of those objects
round which envy in this life gathers. He has raised his own life above the
world, and prizing virtue as his only precious possession he will pass his
days in painless peace and quiet. For virtue is a possession which, though
all according to their capacity should share it, yet will be always in
abundance for those who thirst after it; unlike the occupation of the lands
on this earth, which men divide into sections, and the more they add to the
one the more they take from the other, so that the one person's gain is his
fellow's loss; whence arise the fights for the lion's share, from men's
hatred of being cheated. But the larger owner of this possession is never
envied; he who snatches the lion's share does no damage to him who claims
equal participation; as each is capable each has this noble longing
satisfied, while the wealth of virtues in those who are already
occupiers(8) is not exhausted. The man, then, who, with his eyes only on
such a life, makes virtue, which has no limit that man can devise, his only
treasure, will surely never brook to bend his soul to any of those low
courses which multitudes tread. He will not admire earthly riches, or human
power, or any of those things which folly seeks. If, indeed, his mind is
still pitched so low, he is outside our band of novices, and our words do
not apply to him. But if his thoughts are above, walking as it were with
God, he will be lifted out of the maze of all these errors; for the
predisposing cause of them all, marriage, has not touched him. Now the wish
to be before others is the deadly sin of pride, and one would not be far
wrong in saying that this is the seed-root of all the thorns of sin; but it
is from reasons connected with marriage that this pride mostly begins. To
show what I mean, we generally find the grasping man throwing the blame on
his nearest kin; the man mad after notoriety and ambition generally makes
his family responsible for this sin: "he must not be thought inferior to
his forefathers; he must be deemed a great man by the generation to come by
leaving his children historic records of himself": so also the other
maladies of the soul, envy, spite, hatred and such-like, are connected with
this cause; they are to be found amongst those who are eager about the
things of this life. He who has fled from it gazes as from some high watch-
tower on the prospect of humanity, and pities these slaves of vanity for
their blindness in setting such a value on bodily well-being. He sees some
distinguished person giving himself airs because of his public honours, and
wealth, and power, and only laughs at the folly of being so puffed up. He
gives to the years of human life the longest number, according to the
Psalmist's computation, and then compares this atom-interval with the
endless ages, and pities the vain glory of those who excite themselves for
such low and petty and perishable things. What, indeed, amongst the things
here is there enviable in that which so many strive for,--honour? What is
gained by those who win it? The mortal remains mortal whether he is
honoured or not. What good does the possessor of many acres gain in the
end? Except that the foolish man thinks his own that which never belongs to
him, ignorant seemingly in his greed that "the earth is the Lord's, and the
fulness thereof(9)," for "God is king of all the earth(9)." It is the
passion of having which gives men a false title of lordship over that which
can never belong to them. "The earth," says the wise Preacher, "abideth for
ever(1)," ministering to every generation, first one, then another, that is
born upon it; but men, though they are so little even their own masters,
that they are brought into life without knowing it by their Maker's will,
and before they wish are withdrawn from it, nevertheless in their excessive
vanity think that they are her lords; that they, now born, now dying, rule
that which remains continually. One who reflecting on this holds cheaply
all that mankind prizes, whose only love is the divine life, because "all
flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass(2)," can
never care for this grass which "to-day is and to-morrow is not"; studying
the divine ways, he knows not only that human life has no fixity, but that
the entire universe will not keep on its quiet course for ever; he neglects
his existence here as an alien and a passing thing; for the Saviour said,
"Heaven and earth shall. pass away(3)," the whole of necessity awaits its
refashioning. As long as he is "in this tabernacle(4)." exhibiting
mortality, weighed down with this existence, he laments the lengthening of
his sojourn in it; as the Psalmist-poet says in his heavenly songs. Truly,
they live in darkness who sojourn in these living tabernacles; wherefore
that preacher, groaning at the continuance of this sojourn, says, "Woe is
me that my sojourn is prolonged(5)," and he attributes the cause of his
dejection to "darkness"; for we know that darkness is called in the Hebrew
language "kedar." It is indeed a darkness as of the night which envelops
mankind, and prevents them seeing this deceit and knowing that all which is
most prized by the living, and moreover all which is the reverse, exists
only in the conception of the unreflecting, and is in itself nothing; there
is no such reality anywhere as obscurity of birth, or illustrious birth, or
glory, or splendour, or ancient renown, or present elevation, or power
over others, or subjection. Wealth and comfort, poverty and distress, and
all the other inequalities of life, seem to the ignorant, applying the test
of pleasure, vastly different from each other. But to the higher
understanding they are all alike; one is not of greater value than the
other; because life runs on to the finish with the same speed through all
these opposites, and in the lots of either class there remains the same
power of choice to live welt or ill, "through armour on the right hand and
on the left, through evil report and good report(6)." Therefore the clear-
seeing mind which measures reality will journey on its path without
turning, accomplishing its appointed time from its birth to its exit; it is
neither softened by the pleasures nor beaten down by the hardships; but, as
is the way with travellers, it keeps advancing always, and takes but little
notice of the views presented. It is the travellers' way to press on to
their journey's end', no matter whether they are passing through meadows
and cultivated farms, or through wilder and more rugged spots; a smiling
landscape does not detain them; nor a gloomy one check their speed. So,
too, that lofty mind will press straight on to its self-imposed end, not
turning aside to see anything on the way. It passes through life, but its
gaze is fixed on heaven; it is the good steersman directing the bark to
some landmark there. But the grosser mind looks down; it bends its energies
to bodily pleasures as surely as the sheep stoop to their pasture; it lives
for gorging and still lower pleasures(7); it is alienated from the life of
God(8), and a stranger to the promise of the Covenants; it recognizes no
good but the gratification of the body. It is a mind such as this that
"walks in darkness(9)," and invents all the evil in this life of ours;
avarice, passions unchecked, unbounded luxury, lust of power, vain-glory,
the whole mob of moral diseases that invade men's homes. In these vices,
one somehow holds closely to another; where one has entered all the rest
seem to follow, dragging each other in a natural order, just as in a chain,
when you have jerked the first link, the others cannot rest, and even the
link at the other end feels the motion of the first, which passes thence by
virtue of their contiguity through the intervening links; so firmly are
men's vices linked together by their very nature; when one of them has
gained the mastery of a soul, the rest of the train follow. If you want a
graphic picture of this accursed chain, suppose a man who because of some
special pleasure it gives him is a victim to his thirst for fame; then a
desire to increase his fortune follows close upon this thirst for fame; he
becomes grasping; but only because the first vice leads him on to this.
Then this grasping after money and superiority engenders either anger with
his kith and kin, or pride towards his inferiors, or envy of those above
him; then hypocrisy comes in after this envy; a soured temper after that; a
misanthropical spirit after that; and behind them all a state of
condemnation which ends in the dark fires of hell. You see the chain; how
all follows from one cherished passion. Seeing, then, that this inseparable
train of moral diseases has entered once for all into the world, one single
way of escape is pointed out to us in the exhortations of the inspired
writings; and that is to separate ourselves from the life which involves
this sequence of sufferings. If we haunt Sodom, we cannot escape the rain
of fire; nor if one who has fled out of her looks back upon her desolation,
can he fail to become a pillar of salt rooted to the spot. We cannot be rid
of the Egyptian bondage, unless we leave Egypt, that is, this life that
lies under water(1), and pass, not that Red Sea, but this black and gloomy
Sea of life. But suppose we remain in this evil bondage, and, to use the
Master's words, "the truth shall not have made us free;" how can one who
seeks a lie and wanders in the maze of this world ever come to the truth?
How can one who has surrendered his existence to be chained by nature run
away from this captivity? An illustration will make our meaning. clearer. A
winter torrent(2), which, impetuous in itself, becomes swollen and carries
down beneath its stream trees and boulders and anything that comes in its
way, is death and danger to those alone who live along its course; for
those who have got well out of its way it rages in vain. Just so, only the
man who lives in the turmoil of life has to feel its force; only he has to
receive those sufferings which nature's stream, descending in a flood of
troubles, must, to be true to its kind, bring to those who journey on its
banks. But if a man leaves this torrent, and these "proud waters(3)," he
will escape from being "a prey to the teeth" of this life, as the Psalm
goes on to say, and, as "a bird from the snare," on virtue's wings. This
simile, then, of the torrent holds; human life is a tossing and tumultuous
stream sweeping down to find its natural level; none of the objects sought
for in it last till the seekers are satisfied; all that is carried to them
by this stream comes near, just touches them, and passes on; so that the
present moment in this impetuous flow eludes enjoyment, for the after-
current snatches it from their view. It would be our interest therefore to
keep far away from such a stream, lest, engaged on temporal things, we
should neglect eternity. How can a man keep for ever anything here, be his
love for it never so passionate? Which of life's most cherished objects
endures always? What flower of prime? What gift of strength and beauty?
What wealth, or fame, or power? They all have their transient bloom, and
then melt away into their opposites. Who can continue in life's prime?
Whose strength lasts for ever? Has not Nature made the bloom of beauty even
more shortlived than the shows of spring? For they blossom in their season,
and after withering for a while again revive: after another shedding they
are again in leaf, and retain their beauty of to-day to a late prime. But
Nature exhibits the human bloom only in the spring of early life; then she
kills it; it is vanished in the frosts of age. All other delights also
deceive the bodily eye for a time, and then pass behind the veil of
oblivion. Nature's inevitable changes are many; they agonize him whose love
is passionate. One way of escape is open: it is, to be attached to none of
these things, and to get as far away as
possible from the society of this emotional and sensual world; or rather,
for a man to go outside the feelings which his own body gives rise to.
Then, as he does not live for the flesh, he will not be subject to the
troubles of the flesh. But this amounts to living for the spirit only, and
imitating all we can the employment of the world of spirits. There they
neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Their work and their excellence
is to contemplate the Father of all purity, and to beautify the lines of
their own character from the Source of all beauty, so far as imitation of
It is possible.
CHAPTER V.
Now we declare that Virginity is man's "fellow-worker" and helper in
achieving the aim of this lofty passion. In other sciences men have devised
certain practical methods for cultivating the particular subject; and so, I
take it, virginity is the practical method in the science of the Divine
life, furnishing men with the power of assimilating themselves with
spiritual natures. The constant endeavour in such a course is to prevent
the nobility of the soul from being lowered by those sensual outbreaks, in
which the mind no longer maintains its heavenly thoughts and upward gaze,
but sinks down to the emotions belonging to the flesh and blood. How can
the soul which is riveted(4) to the pleasures of the flesh and busied with
merely human longings turn a disengaged eye upon its kindred intellectual
light? This evil, ignorant, and prejudiced bias towards material things
will prevent it. The eyes of swine, turning naturally downward, have no
glimpse of the wonders of the sky; no more can the soul whose body drags it
down look any longer upon the beauty above; it must pore perforce upon
things which though natural are low and animal. To look with a free devoted
gaze upon heavenly delights, the soul will turn itself from earth; it will
not even partake of the recognized indulgences of the secular life; it will
transfer all its powers of affection from material objects to the
intellectual contemplation of immaterial beauty. Virginity of the body is
devised to further such a disposition of the soul; it aims at creating in
it a complete forgetfulness of natural emotions; it would prevent the
necessity of ever descending to the call of fleshly needs. Once freed from
such, the soul runs no risk of becoming, through a growing habit of
indulging in that which seems to a certain extent conceded by nature's law,
inattentive and ignorant of Divine and undefiled delights. Purity of the
heart, that master of our lives, alone can capture them.
CHAPTER VI.
THIS, I believe, makes the greatness of the prophet Elias, and of him
who afterwards appeared in the spirit and power of Elias, than whom "of
those that are born of women there was none greater(5)." If their history
conveys any other mystic lesson, surely this above all is taught by their
special mode of life, that the man whose thoughts are fixed upon the
invisible is necessarily separated from all the ordinary events of life;
his judgments as to the True Good cannot be confused and led astray by the
deceits arising from the senses. Both, from their youth upwards, exiled
themselves from human society, and in a way from human nature, in their
neglect of the usual kinds of meat and drink, and their sojourn in the
desert. The wants of each were satisfied by the nourishment that came in
their way, so that their taste might remain simple and unspoilt, as their
ears were free from any distracting noise, and their eyes from any
wandering look. Thus they attained a cloudless calm of soul, and were
raised to that height of Divine favour which Scripture records of each.
Elias, for instance; became the dispenser of God's earthly gifts; he had
authority to close at will the uses of the sky against the sinners and to
open them to the penitent. John is not said indeed to have done any
miracle; but the gift in him was pronounced by Him Who sees the secrets of
a man greater than any prophet's. This was so, we may presume, because
both, from beginning to end, so dedicated their hearts to the Lord that
they were unsullied by any earthly passion; because the love of wife or
child, or any other human call, did not intrude upon them, and they did not
even think their daily sustenance worthy of anxious thought; because they
showed themselves to be above any magnificence(6) of dress, arid made shift
with that which chance offered them, one clothing himself in goat-skins,
the other with camel's hair. It is my belief that they would not have
reached to this loftiness of spirit, if marriage had softened them. This is
not simple history only; it is "written for our admonition(7)," that we
might direct our lives by theirs. What, then, do we learn thereby? This:
that the man who longs for union with God must, like those saints, detach
his mind from all worldly business. It is impossible for the mind which is
poured into many channels to win its way to the knowledge and the love of
God.
CHAPTER VII.
AN illustration will make our teaching on this subject clearer. Imagine
a stream flowing from a spring and dividing itself off into a number of
accidental channels. As long as it proceeds so it will be useless for any
purpose of agriculture, the dissipation of its waters making each
particular current small and feeble, and therefore slow. But if one were to
mass these wandering and widely dispersed rivulets again into one single
channel, he would have a full and collected stream for the supplies which
life demands. Just so the human mind(so it seems to me), as long as its
current spreads itself in all directions over the pleasures of the sense,
has no power that is worth the naming of making its way towards the Real
Good; but once call it back and collect it upon itself, so that it may
begin to move without scattering and wandering towards the activity which
is congenital and natural to it, it will find no obstacle in mounting to
higher things, and in grasping realities. We often see water contained in a
pipe bursting upwards through this constraining force, which will not let
it leak; and this, in spite of its natural gravitation: in the same way,
the mind of man, enclosed in the compact channel of an habitual continence,
and not having any side issues, will be raised by virtue of its natural
powers of motion to an exalted love. In fact, its Maker ordained that it
should always move, and to stop is impossible to it; when therefore it is
prevented employing this power upon trifles, it cannot be but that it will
speed toward the truth, all improper exits being closed. In the case of
many turnings we see travellers can keep to the direct route, when they
have learnt that the other roads are wrong, and so avoid them; the more
they keep out of these wrong directions, the more they will preserve the
straight course; in like manner the mind in turning from vanities will
recognize the truth. The great prophets, then, whom we have mentioned seem
to teach this lesson, viz. to entangle ourselves with none of the objects
of this world's effort; marriage is one of these, or rather it is the
primal root of all striving after vanities.
CHAPTER VIII.
LET no one think however that herein we depreciate marriage as an
institution. We are well aware that it is not a stranger to God's blessing.
But since the common instincts of mankind can plead sufficiently on its
behalf, instincts which prompt by a spontaneous bias to take the high road
of marriage for the procreation of children, whereas Virginity in a way
thwarts this natural impulse, it is a superfluous task to compose formally
an Exhortation to marriage. We put forward the pleasure of it instead, as a
most doughty champion on its behalf. It may be however, notwithstanding
this, that there is some need of such a treatise, occasioned by those who
travesty the teaching of the Church. Such persons(8) "have their conscience
seared with a hot iron," as the Apostle expresses it; and very truly too,
considering that, deserting the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the
"doctrines of devils," they have some ulcers and blisters stamped upon
their hearts, abominating God's creatures, and calling them "foul,"
"seducing," "mischievous," and so on. "But what have I to do to judge them
that are without(9)?" asks the Apostle. Truly those persons are outside the
Court in which the words of our mysteries are spoken; they are not
installed under God's roof, but in the monastery of the Evil One. They "are
taken captive by him at his will(1)." They therefore do not understand that
all virtue is found in moderation, and that any declension to either
side(2) of it becomes a vice. He, in fact, who grasps the middle point
between doing too little and doing too much has hit the distinction between
vice and virtue. Instances will make this clearer. Cowardice and audacity
are two recognized vices opposed to each other; the one the defect, the
other the excess of confidence; between them lies courage. Again, piety is
neither atheism nor superstition; it is equally impious to deny a God and
to believe in many gods. Is there need of more examples to bring this
principle home? The man who avoids both meanness and prodigality will by
this shunning of extremes form the moral habit of liberality; for
liberality is the thing which is neither inclined to spend at random vast
and useless sums, nor yet to be closely calculating in necessary expenses.
We need not go into details in the case of all good qualities. Reason, in
all of them, has established virtue to be a middle state between two
extremes. Sobriety itself therefore is a middle state, and manifestly
involves the two declensions on either side towards vice; he, that is, who
is wanting in firmness of soul, and is so easily worsted in the combat with
pleasure as never even to have approached the path of a virtuous and sober
life, slides into shameful indulgence; while he who goes beyond the safe
ground of sobriety and overshoots the moderation of this virtue, falls as
it were from a precipice into the "doctrines of devils," "having his
conscience seared with a hot iron." In declaring marriage abominable he
brands himself with such reproaches; for "if the tree is corrupt" (as the
Gospel says), "the fruit also of the tree will be like it(3)"; if a man is
the shoot and fruitage of the tree of marriage, reproaches cast on that
turn upon him who casts them(4). These persons, then, are like branded
criminals already; their conscience is covered with the stripes of this
unnatural teaching. But our view of marriage is this; that, while the
pursuit of heavenly things should be a man's first care, yet if he can use
the advantages of marriage with sobriety and moderation, he need not
despise this way of serving the state. An example might be found in the
patriarch Isaac. He married Rebecca when he was past the flower of his age
and his prime was well-nigh spent, so that his marriage was not the deed of
passion, but because of God's blessing that should be upon his seed. He
cohabited with her till the birth of her only children(5), and then,
closing the channels of the senses, lived wholly for the Unseen; for this
is what seems to be meant by the mention in his history of the dimness of
the Patriarch's eyes. But let that be as those think who are skilled in
reading these meanings, and let us proceed with the continuity of our
discourse. What then, were we saying? That in the cases where it is
possible at once to be true to the diviner love, and to embrace wedlock,
there is no reason for setting aside this dispensation of nature and
misrepresenting as abominable that which is honourable. Let us take again
our illustration of the water and the spring. Whenever the husbandman, in
order to irrigate a particular spot, is bringing the stream thither, but
there is need before it gets there of a small outlet, he will allow only so
much to escape into that outlet as is adequate to supply the demand, and
can then easily be blended again with the main stream. If, as an
inexperienced and easy-going steward, he opens too wide a channel, there
will be danger of the whole stream quitting its direct bed and pouring
itself sideways. In the same way, if (as life does need a mutual
succession) a man so treats this need as to give spiritual things the first
thought, and because of the shortness(6) of the time indulges but sparingly
the sexual passion and keeps it under restraint, that man would realize the
character of the prudent husband man to which the Apostle exhorts us. About
the details of paying these trifling debts of nature he will not be over-
calculating, but the long hours of his prayers(7) will secure the purity
which is the key-note of his life. He will always fear lest by this kind of
indulgence he may become nothing but flesh and blood; for in them God's
Spirit does not dwell. He who is of so weak a character that he cannot make
a manful stand against nature's impulse had better(8) keep himself very far
away from such temptations, rather than descend into a combat which is
above his strength. There is no small danger for him lest, cajoled in the
valuation of pleasure, he should think that there exists no other good but
that which is enjoyed along with some sensual emotion, and, turning
altogether from the love of immaterial delights, should become entirely of
the flesh, seeking always his pleasure only there, so that his character
will be a Pleasure-lover, not a God-lover. It is not every man's gift,
owing to weakness of nature, to hit the due proportion in these matters;
there is a danger of being carried far beyond it, and "sticking fast in the
deep mire(9)," to use the Psalmist's words. It would therefore be for our
interest, as our discourse has been suggesting, to pass through life
without a trial of these temptations, lest under cover of the excuse of
lawful indulgence passion should gain an entrance into the citadel of the
soul.
CHAPTER IX.
CUSTOM is indeed in everything hard to resist. It possesses an enormous
power of attracting and seducing the soul. In the cases where a man has got
into a fixed state of sentiment, a certain imagination of the good is
created in him by this habit; and nothing is so naturally vile but it may
come to be thought both desirable and laudable, once it has got into the
fashion(1). Take mankind now living on the earth. There are many nations,
and their ambitions are not all the same. The standard of beauty and of
honour is different in each, the custom of each regulating their enthusiasm
and their aims. This unlikeness is seen not only amongst nations where the
pursuits of the one are in no repute with the other, but even in the same
nation, and the same city, and the same family; we may see in those
aggregates also much difference existing owing to customary feeling. Thus
brothers born from the same throe are separated widely from each other in
the aims of life. Nor is this to be wondered at, considering that each
single man does not generally keep to the same opinion about the same
thing, but alters it as fashion influences him. Not to go far from our
present subject, we have known those who have shown themselves to be in
love with chastity all through the early years of puberty; but in taking
the pleasures which men think legitimate and allowable they make them the
starting-point of an impure life, and when once they have admitted these
temptations, all the forces of their feeling are turned in that direction,
and, to take again our illustration of the stream, they let it rush from
the diviner channel into low material channels, and make within themselves
a broad path for passion; so that the stream of their love leaves dry the
abandoned channel of the higher way(2) and flows abroad in indulgence. It
would be well then, we take it, for the weaker brethren to fly to virginity
as into an impregnable fortress, rather than to descend into the career of
life's consequences and invite temptations to do their worst upon them,
entangling themselves in those things which through the lusts of the flesh
war against the law of our mind; it would be well for them to consider(3)
that herein they risk not broad acres, or wealth, or any other of this
life's prizes, but the hope which has been their guide. It is impossible
that one who has turned to the world and feels its anxieties, and engages
his heart in the wish to please men, can fulfil that first and great
commandment of the Master, "Thou shall love God with all thy heart and with
all thy strength(4)." How can he fulfil that, when he divides his heart
between God and the world, and exhausts the love which he owes to Him alone
in human affections? "He that is unmarried careth for the things of the
Lord; but he that is married careth for the things that are of the
world(5)." If the combat with pleasure seems wearisome, nevertheless let
all take heart. Habit will not fail to produce, even in the seemingly most
fretful(6), a feeling of pleasure through the very effort of their
perseverance; and that pleasure will be of the noblest and purest kind;
which the intelligent may well be enamoured of, rather than allow
themselves, with aims narrowed by the lowness of their objects, to be
estranged from the true greatness which goes beyond all thought.
CHAPTER X.
WHAT words indeed could possibly express the greatness of that loss in
falling away from the possession of real goodness? What consummate power of
thought would have to be employed! Who could produce even in outline that
which speech cannot tell, nor the mind grasp? On the one hand, if a man has
kept the eye of his heart so clear that he can in a way behold the promise
of our Lord's Beatitudes realized, he will condemn all human utterance as
powerless to represent that which he has apprehended. On the other hand, if
a man from the atmosphere of material indulgences has the weakness of
passion spreading like a film over the keen vision of his soul, all force
of expression will be wasted upon him; for it is all one whether you
understate or whether you magnify a miracle to those who have no power
whatever of perceiving it(7). Just as, in the case of the sunlight, on one
who has never from the day of his birth seen it, all efforts at translating
it into words are quite thrown away; you cannot make the splendour of the
ray shine(8) through his ears; in like manner, to see the beauty of the
true and intellectual light, each man has need of eyes of his own; and he
who by a gift of Divine inspiration can see it retains his ecstasy
unexpressed in the depths of his consciousness; while he who sees it not
cannot be made to know even the greatness of his loss. How should he? This
good escapes his perception, and it cannot be represented to him; it is
unspeakable, and cannot be delineated. We have not learnt the peculiar
language expressive of this beauty. An example of what we want to say does
not exist in the world; a comparison for it would at least be very
difficult to find. Who compares the Sun to a little spark? or the vast Deep
to a drop? And that tiny drop and that diminutive spark bear the same
relation to the Deep and to the Sun, as any beautiful object of man's
admiration does to that real beauty on the features of the First Good, of
which we catch the glimpse beyond any other good. What words could be
invented to show the greatness of this loss to him who suffers it? Well
does the great David seem to me to express the impossibility of doing this.
He has been lifted by the power of the Spirit out of himself, and sees in a
blessed state of ecstacy the boundless and incomprehensible Beauty; he sees
it as fully as a mortal can see who has quitted his fleshly envelopments
and entered, by the mere power of thought, upon the contemplation of the
spiritual and intellectual world, and in his longing to speak a word worthy
of the spectacle he bursts forth with that cry, which all re-echo, "Every
man a liar(9)!" I take that to mean that any man who entrusts to language
the task of presenting the ineffable Light is really and truly a liar; not
because of any hatred on his part of the truth, but because of the
feebleness of his instrument for expressing the thing thought of(1). The
visible beauty to be met with in this life of ours, showing glimpses of
itself, whether in inanimate objects or in animate organisms in a certain
choiceness of colour, can be adequately admired by our power of aesthetic
feeling. It can be illustrated and made known to others by description; it
can be seen drawn in the language as in a picture. Even a perfect type(2)
of such beauty does not baffle our conception. But how can language
illustrate when it finds no media for its sketch, no colour, no contour(3),
no majestic size, no faultlessness of feature; nor any other commonplace of
art? The Beauty which is invisible and formless, which is destitute of
qualities and far removed from everything which we recognize in bodies by
the eye, can never be made known by the traits which require nothing but
the perceptions of our senses in order to be grasped. Not that we are to
despair of winning this object of our love, though it does seem too high
for our comprehension. The more reason shows the greatness of this thing
which we are seeking, the higher we must lift our thoughts and excite them
with the greatness of that object; and we must fear to lose our share in
that transcendent Good. There is indeed no small amount of danger lest, as
we can base the apprehension of it on no knowable qualities, we should slip
away from it altogether because of its very height and mystery. We deem it
necessary therefore, owing to this weakness of the thinking faculty, to
lead it towards the Unseen by stages through the cognizances of the senses.
Our conception of the case is as follows.
CHAPTER XI.
Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things
observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e.g. of a man, and
then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the
bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him.
But the penetrating and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone
the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances,
nor count that which is not seen amongst unrealities. It inquires into the
qualities of the man's soul. It takes those of its characteristics which
have been developed by his bodily constitution, both in combination and
singly; first singly, by analysis, and then in that living combination
which makes the personality of the subject. As regards the inquiry into the
nature of beauty, we see, again, that the man of half-grown intelligence,
when he observes an object which is bathed in the glow of a seeming beauty,
thinks that that object is in its essence beautiful, no matter what it is
that so prepossesses him with the pleasure of the eye. He will not go
deeper into the subject. But the other, whose mind's eye is clear, and who
can inspect such appearances, will neglect those elements which are the
material only upon which the Form of Beauty works; to him they will be but
the ladder by which he climbs to the prospect of that Intellectual Beauty,
in accordance with their share in which all other beauties get their
existence and their name. But for the majority, I take it, who live all
their lives with such obtuse faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing
to perform this feat of mental analysis and of discriminating the material
vehicle from the immanent beauty, and thereby of grasping the actual nature
of the Beautiful; and if any one wants to know the exact source of all the
false and pernicious conceptions of it, he would find it in nothing else
but this, viz. the absence, in the soul's faculties of feeling, of that
exact training which would enable them to distinguish between true Beauty
and the reverse. Owing to this men give up all search after the true
Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline in their desires to
dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to
worldly honours, fame, and power. There is another class which is
enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased make their gluttony
the test of what is good. But he who turns from all grosser thoughts and
all passionate longings after what is seeming, and explores the nature of
the beauty which is simple, immaterial, formless, would never make a
mistake like that when he has to choose between all the objects of desire;
he would never be so misled by these attractions as not to see the
transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an utter
contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the
discovery of the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men's love, be
they never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never
so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the
powers of loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be
locked up within us unused and motionless; but only that they must first be
cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to
which sense can never reach. Admiration even of the beauty of the heavens,
and of the dazzling sunbeams, and, indeed, of any fair phenomenon, will
then cease. The beauty noticed there will be but as the hand to lead us to
the love of the supernal Beauty whose glory the heavens and the firmament
declare, and whose secret the whole creation sings. The climbing soul,
leaving all that she has grasped already as too narrow for her needs, will
thus grasp the idea of that magnificence which is exalted far above the
heavens. But how can any one reach to this, whose ambitions creep below?
How can any one fly up into the heavens, who has not the wings of heaven
and is not already buoyant and lofty-minded by reason of a heavenly
calling? Few can be such strangers to evangelic mysteries as not to know
that there is but one vehicle on which man's soul can mount into the
heavens, viz. the self-made likeness in himself to the descending Dove,
whose wings(4) David the Prophet also longed for. This is the allegorical
name used in Scripture for the power of the Holy Spirit; whether it be
because not a drop of gall s is found in that bird, or because it cannot
bear any noisome smell, as close observers tell us. He therefore who keeps
away from all bitterness and all the noisome effluvia of the flesh, and
raises himself on the aforesaid wings above all low earthly ambitions, or,
more than that, above the whole universe itself, will be the man to find
that which is alone worth loving, and to become himself as beautiful as the
Beauty which he has touched and entered, and to be made bright and luminous
himself in the communion of the real Light. We are told by those who have
studied the subject, that those gleams which follow each other so fast
through the air at night and which some call shooting stars(6), are nothing
but the air itself streaming into the upper regions of the sky under stress
of some particular blasts. They say that the fiery track is traced along
the sky when those blasts ignite in the ether. In like manner, then, as
this air round the earth is forced upwards by some blast and changes into
the pure splendour of the ether, so the mind of man leaves this murky miry
world, and under the stress of the spirit becomes pure and luminous in
contact with the true and supernal Purity; in such an atmosphere it even
itself emits light, and is so filled with radiance, that it becomes itself
a Light, according to the promise of our Lord that "the righteous should
shine forth as the sun(7)." We see this even here, in the case of a mirror,
or a sheet of water, or any smooth surface that can reflect the light; when
they receive the sunbeam they beam themselves; but they would not do this
if any stain marred their pure and shining surface. We shall become then as
the light, in our nearness to Christ's true light, if we leave this dark
atmosphere of the earth and dwell above; and we shall be light, as our Lord
says somewhere to His disciples(8), if the true Light that shineth in the
dark comes down even to us; unless, that is, any foulness of sin spreading
over our hearts should dim the brightness of our light. Perhaps these
examples have led us gradually on to the discovery that we can be changed
into something better than ourselves; and it has been proved as well that
this union of the soul with the incorruptible Deity can be accomplished in
no other way but by herself attaining by her virgin state to the utmost
purity possible,--a state which, being like God, will enable her to grasp
that to which it is like, while she places herself like a mirror beneath
the purity of God, and moulds her own beauty at the touch and the sight of
the Archetype of all beauty. Take a character strong enough to turn from
all that is human, from persons, from wealth, from the pursuits of Art and
Science, even from whatever in moral practice and in legislation is viewed
as right (for still in all of them error in the apprehension of the
Beautiful comes in, sense being the criterion); such a character will feel
as a passionate lover only towards that Beauty which has no source but
Itself, which is not such at one particular time or relatively only, which
is Beautiful from, and through, and in itself, not such at one moment and
in the next ceasing to be such, above all increase and addition, incapable
of change and alteration. I venture to affirm that, to one who has cleansed
all the powers of his being from every form of vice, the Beauty which is
essential, the source of every beauty and every good, will become visible.
The visual eye, purged from its blinding humour, can clearly discern
objects even on the distant sky(9); so to the soul by virtue of her
innocence there comes the power of taking in that Light; and the real
Virginity, the real zeal for chastity, ends in no other goal than this,
viz. the power thereby of seeing God. No one in fact is so mentally blind
as not to understand that without telling; viz. that the God of the
Universe is the only absolute, and primal, and unrivalled(1) Beauty and
Goodness. All, maybe, know that; but there are those who, as might have
been expected, wish besides this to discover, if possible, a process by
which we may be actually guided to it. Well, the Divine books are full of
such instruction for our guidance; and besides that many of the Saints cast
the refulgence of their own lives, like lamps, upon the path for those who
are "walking with God(2).'' But each may gather in abundance for himself
suggestions towards this end out of either Covenant in the inspired
writings; the Prophets and the Law are full of them; and also the Gospel
and the Traditions of the Apostles. What we ourselves have conjectured in
following out the thoughts of those inspired utterances is this.
CHAPTER XII.
THIS reasoning and intelligent creature, man, at once the work and the
likeness of the Divine and Imperishable Mind (for so in the Creation it is
written of him that "God made man in His image(3)"), this creature, I say,
did not in the course of his first production have united to the very
essence of his nature the liability to passion and to death. Indeed, the
truth about the image could never have been maintained if the beauty
reflected in that image had been in the slightest degree opposed(4) to the
Archetypal Beauty. Passion was introduced afterwards, subsequent to man's
first organization; and it was in this way. Being the image and the
likeness, as has been said, of the Power which rules all things, man kept
also in the matter of a Free-Will this likeness to Him whose Will is over
all. He was enslaved to no outward necessity whatever; his feeling towards
that which pleased him depended only on his own private judgment; he was
free to choose whatever he liked; and so he was a free agent, though
circumvented with cunning, when he drew upon himself that disaster which
now overwhelms humanity. He became himself the discoverer of evil, but he
did not therein discover what God had made; for God did not make death. Man
became, in fact, himself the fabricator, to a certain extent, and the
craftsman of evil. All who have the faculty of sight may enjoy equally the
sunlight; and any one can if he likes put this enjoyment from him by
shutting his eyes: in that case it is not that the sun retires and produces
that darkness, but the man himself puts a barrier between his eye and the
sunshine; the faculty of vision cannot deed, even in the closing of the
eyes, remain inactive(5), and so this operative sight necessarily becomes
an operative darkness(6) rising up in the man from his own free act in
ceasing to see. Again, a man in building a house for himself may omit to
make in it any way of entrance for the light; he will necessarily be in
darkness, though he cuts himself off from the light voluntarily. So the
first man on the earth, or rather he who generated evil in man, had for
choice the Good and the Beautiful lying all around him in the very nature
of things; yet he wilfully cut out a new way for himself against this
nature, and in the act of turning away from virtue, which was his own free
act, he created the usage of evil. For, be it observed, there is no such
thing in the world as evil irrespective of a will, and discoverable in a
substance apart from that. Every creature of God is good, and nothing of
His "to be rejected"; all that God made was "very good(7)." But the habit
of sinning entered as we have described, and with fatal quickness, into the
life of man; and from that small beginning spread into this infinitude of
evil. Then that godly beauty of the soul which was an imitation of the
Archetypal Beauty, like fine steel blackened(8) with the vicious rust,
preserved no longer the glory of its familiar essence, but was disfigured
with the ugliness of sin. This thing so great and precious(9), as the
Scripture calls him, this being man, has fallen from his proud birthright.
As those who have slipped and fallen heavily into mud, and have all their
features so besmeared with it, that their nearest friends do not recognize
them, so this creature has fallen into the mire of sin and lost the
blessing of being an image of the imperishable Deity; he has clothed
himself instead with a perishable and foul resemblance to something else;
and this Reason counsels him to put away again by washing it off in the
cleansing water of this calling(1). The earthly envelopment once removed,
the soul's beauty will again appear. Now the putting off of a strange
accretion is equivalent to the return to that which is familiar and
natural; yet such a return cannot be but by again becoming that which in
the beginning we were created. In fact this likeness to the divine is not
our work at all; it is not the achievement of any faculty of man; it is the
great gift of God bestowed upon our nature at the very moment of our birth;
human efforts can only go so far as to clear away the filth of sin, and so
cause the buried beauty of the soul to shine forth again. This truth is, I
think, taught in the Gospel, when our Lord says, to those who can hear what
Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery, that "the Kingdom of God is within
you(2)." That word(3) points out the fact that the Divine good is not
something apart from our nature, and is not removed far away from those who
have the will to seek it; it is in fact within each of us, ignored indeed,
and unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures of life,
but found again whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking
towards it. If further confirmation of what we say is required, I think it
will be found in what is suggested by our Lord in the searching for the
Lost Drachma(4). The thought, there, is that the widowed soul reaps no
benefit from the other virtues (called drachmas in the Parable) being all
of them found safe, if that one other is not amongst them. The Parable
therefore suggests that a candle should first be lit, signifying doubtless
our reason which throws light on hidden principles; then that in one's own
house, that is, within oneself, we should search for that lost coin; and by
that coin the Parable doubtless hints at the image of our King, not yet
hopelessly lost, but hidden beneath the dirt; and by this last we must
understand the impurities of the flesh, which, being swept and purged away
by carefulness of life, leave clear to the view the object of our search.
Then it is meant that the soul herself who finds this rejoices over it, and
with her the neighbours, whom she calls in to share with her in this
delight. Verily, all those powers which are the housemates of the soul, and
which the Parable names her neighbours for this occasion(5), when so be
that the image of the mighty King is revealed in all its brightness at last
(that image which the Fashioner of each individual heart of us has stamped
upon this our Drachma(6)), will then be converted to that divine delight
and festivity, and will gaze upon the ineffable beauty of the recovered
one. "Rejoice with me," she says, "because I have found the Drachma which I
had lost." The neighbours, that is, the soul's familiar powers, both the
reasoning and the appetitive, the affections of grief and of anger, and all
the rest that are discerned in her, at that joyful feast which celebrates
the finding of the heavenly Drachma are well called her friends also; and
it is meet that they should all rejoice in the Lord when they all look
towards the Beautiful and the Good, and do everything for the glory of God,
no longer instruments of sin(7). If, then, such is the lesson of this
Finding of the lost, viz. that we should restore the divine image from the
foulness which the flesh wraps round it to its primitive state, let us
become that which the First Man was at the moment when he first breathed.
And what was that? Destitute he was then of his covering of dead skins, but
he could gaze without shrinking upon God's countenance. He did not yet
judge of what was lovely by taste or sight; he found in the Lord alone all
that was sweet; and he used the helpmeet given him only for this delight,
as Scripture signifies when it said that "he knew her not(8)" till he was
driven forth from the garden, and till she, for the sin which she was
decoyed into committing, was sentenced to the pangs of childbirth. We,
then, who in our first ancestor were thus ejected, are allowed to return to
our earliest state of blessedness by the very same stages by which we lost
Paradise. What are they? Pleasure, craftily offered, began the Fall, and
there followed after pleasure shame, and fear, even to remain longer in the
sight of their Creator, so that they hid themselves in leaves and shade;
and after that they covered themselves with the skins of dead animals; and
then were sent forth into this pestilential and exacting land where, as the
compensation for having to die, marriage was instituted(9). Now if we are
destined "to depart hence, and be with Christ(1),'' we must begin at the
end of the route of departure (which ties nearest to ourselves); just as
those who have travelled far from their friends at home, when they turn to
reach again the place from which they started, first leave that district
which they reached at the end of their outward journey. Marriage, then, is
the last stage of our separation from the life that was led in Paradise;
marriage therefore, as our discourse has been suggesting, is the first
thing to be left; it is the first station as it were for our departure to
Christ. Next, we must retire from all anxious toil upon the land, such as
man was bound to after his sin. Next we must divest ourselves of those
coverings of our nakedness, the coats of skins, namely the wisdom of the
flesh; we must renounce all shameful things done in secret(2), and be
covered no longer with the fig-leaves of this bitter world; then, when we
have torn off the coatings of this life's perishable leaves, we must stand
again in the sight of our Creator; and repelling all the illusion of taste
and sight, take for our guide God's commandment only, instead of the venom-
spitting serpent. That commandment was, to touch nothing but what was Good,
and to leave what was evil untasted; because impatience to remain any
longer in ignorance of evil would be but the beginning of the long train of
actual evil. For this reason it was forbidden to our first parents to grasp
the knowledge of the opposite to the good, as well as that of the good
itself; they were to keep themselves from "the knowledge of good and
evil(3)," and to enjoy the Good in its purity, unmixed with one particle of
evil: and to enjoy that, is in my judgment nothing else than to be ever
with God, and to feel ceaselessly and continually this delight, unalloyed
by aught that could tear us away from it. One might even be bold to say
that this might be found the way by which a man could be again caught up
into Paradise out of this world which lieth in the Evil, into that Paradise
where Paul was when he saw the unspeakable sights which it is not lawful
for a man to talk of(4).
CHAPTER XIII.
BUT seeing that Paradise is the home of living spirits, and will not
admit those who are dead in sin, and that we on the other hand are fleshly,
subject to death, and sold under sin(5), how is it possible that one who is
a subject of death's empire should ever dwell in this land where all is
life? What method of release from this jurisdiction can be devised? Here
too the Gospel teaching is abundantly sufficient. We hear our Lord saying
to Nicodemus, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is
born of the Spirit is spirit(6).'' We know too that the flesh is subject to
death because of sin, but the Spirit of God is both incorruptible, and
life-giving, and deathless. As at our physical birth there comes into the
world with us a potentiality of being again turned to dust, plainly the
Spirit also imparts a life-giving potentiality to the children begotten by
Himself. What lesson, then, results from these remarks? This: that we
should wean ourselves from this life in the flesh, which has an inevitable
follower, death; and that we should search for a manner of life which does
not bring death in its train. Now the life of Virginity is such a life. We
will add a few other things to show how true this is. Every one knows that
the propagation of mortal frames is the work which the intercourse of the
sexes has to do; whereas for those who are joined to the Spirit, life and
immortality instead of children are produced by this latter intercourse;
and the words of the Apostle beautifully suit their case, for the joyful
mother of such children as these "shall be saved in child-bearing(7);" as
the Psalmist in his divine songs thankfully cries, "He maketh the barren
woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children(8)." Truly a
joyful mother is the virgin mother who by the operation of the Spirit
conceives the deathless children, and who is called by the Prophet barren
because of her modesty only. This life, then, which is stronger than the
power of death, is, to those who think, the preferable one. The physical
bringing of children into the world--I speak without wishing to offend--is
as much a starting-point of death as of life; because from the moment of
birth the process of dying commences. But those who by virginity have
desisted from this process have drawn within themselves the boundary line
of death, and by their own deed have checked his advance; they have made
themselves, in fact, a frontier between life and death, and a barrier too,
which thwarts him. If, then, death cannot pass beyond virginity, but finds
his power checked and shattered there, it is demonstrated that virginity is
a stronger thing than death; and that body is rightly named undying which
does not lend its service to a dying world, nor brook to become the
instrument of a succession of dying creatures. In such a body the long
unbroken career of decay and death, which has intervened between(9) the
first man and the lives of virginity which have been led, is interrupted.
It could not be indeed that death should cease working as long as the human
race by marriage was working too; he walked the path of life with all
preceding generations; he started with every new-born child and accompanied
it to the end: but he found in virginity a barrier, to pass which was an
impossible feat. Just as, in the age of Mary the mother of God, he who had
reigned from Adam to her time found, when he came to her and dashed his
forces against the fruit of her virginity as against a rock, that he was
shattered to pieces upon her, so in every soul which passes through this
life in the flesh under the protection of virginity, the strength of death
is in a manner broken and annulled, for he does not find the places upon
which he may fix his sting. If you do not throw into the fire wood, or
straw, or grass, or something that it can consume, it has not the force to
last by itself; so the power of death cannot go on working, if marriage
does not supply it with material and prepare victims for this executioner.
If you have any doubts left, consider the actual names of those afflictions
which death brings upon mankind, and which were detailed in the first part
of this discourse. Whence do they get their meaning? "Widowhood,"
"orphanhood," "loss of children," could they be a subject for grief, if
marriage did not precede? Nay, all the dearly-prized blisses, and
transports, and comforts of marriage end in these agonies of grief, The
hilt of a sword is smooth and handy, and polished and glittering outside;
it seems to grow to the outline of the hand(1); but the other part is steel
and the instrument of death, formidable to look at, more formidable still
to come across. Such a thing is marriage. It offers for the grasp of the
senses a smooth surface of delights, like a hilt of rare polish and
beautiful workmanship; but when a man has taken it up and has got it into
his hands, he finds the pain that has been wedded to it is in his hands as
well; and it becomes to him the worker of mourning and of loss. It is
marriage that has the heartrending spectacles to show of children left
desolate in the tenderness of their years, a mere prey to the powerful, yet
smiling often at their misfortune from ignorance of coming woes. What is
the cause of widowhood but marriage? And retirement from this would bring
with it an immunity from the whole burden of these sad taxes on our hearts.
Can we expect it otherwise? When the verdict that was pronounced on the
delinquents in the beginning is annulled, then too the mothers'
"sorrows(2)" are no longer "multiplied," nor does "sorrow" herald the
births of men; then all calamity has been removed from life and "tears
wiped from. off all faces(3);" conception is no more an iniquity, nor
child-bearing a sin; and births shall be no more "of bloods," or "of the
will of man," or "of the will of the flesh(4)", but of God alone. This is
always happening whenever any one in a lively heart conceives all the
integrity of the Spirit, and brings forth wisdom and righteousness, and
sanctification and redemption too. It is possible for any one to be the
mother of such a son; as our Lord says, "He that doeth my will is my
brother, my sister, and my mother(5)." What room is there for death in such
parturitions? Indeed in them death is swallowed up by life. In fact, the
Life of Virginity seems to be an actual representation of the blessedness
in the world to come, showing as it does in itself so many signs of the
presence of those expected blessings which are reserved for us there. That
the truth of this statement may be perceived, we will verify it thus. It is
so, first, because a man who has thus died once for all to sin lives for
the future to God; he brings forth no more fruit unto death; and having so
far as in him lies made an end(6) of this life within him according to the
flesh, he awaits thenceforth the expected blessing of the manifestation(7)
of the great God, refraining from putting any distance between himself and
this coming of God by an intervening posterity: secondly, because he enjoys
even in this present life a certain exquisite glory of all the blessed
results of our resurrection. For our Lord has announced that the life after
our resurrection shall be as that of the angels. Now the peculiarity of the
angelic nature is that they are strangers to marriage; therefore the
blessing of this promise has been already received by him who has not only
mingled his own glory with the halo of the Saints, but also by the
stainlessness of his life has so imitated the purity of these incorporeal
beings. If virginity then can win us favours such as these, what words are
fit to express the admiration of so great a grace? What other gift of the
soul can be found so great and precious as not to suffer by comparison with
this perfection ?
CHAPTER XIV.
BUT if we apprehend at last the perfection of this grace, we must
understand as well what necessarily follows from it; namely that it is not
a single achievement, ending in the subjugation of the body, but that in
intention it reaches to and pervades everything that is, or is considered,
a right condition of the soul. That soul indeed which in virginity cleaves
to the true Bridegroom will not remove herself merely from all bodily
defilement; she will make that abstension only the beginning of her purity,
and will carry this security from failure equally into everything else upon
her path. Fearing lest, from a too partial heart, she should by contact
with evil in any one direction give occasion for the least weakness of
unfaithfulness (to suppose such a case: but I will begin again what I was
going to say), that soul which cleaves to her Master so as to become with
Him one spirit, and by the compact of a wedded life has staked the love of
all her heart and all her strength on Him alone--that soul will no more
commit any other of the offences contrary to salvation, than imperil her
union with Him by cleaving to fornication; she knows that between all sins
there is a single kinship of impurity, and that if she were to defile
herself with but one(8), she could no longer retain her spotlessness. An
illustration will show what we mean. Suppose all the water in a pool
remaining smooth and motionless, while no disturbance of any kind comes to
mar the peacefulness of the spot; and then a stone thrown into the pool;
the movement in that one part(9) will extend to the whole, and while the
stone's weight is carrying it to the bottom, the waves that are set in
motion round it pass in circles(1) into others, and so through all the
intervening commotion are pushed on to the very edge of the water, and the
whole surface is ruffled with these circles, feeling the movement of the
depths. So is the broad serenity and calm of the soul troubled by one
invading passion, and affected by the injury of a single part. They tell us
too, those who have investigated the subject, that the virtues are not
disunited from each other, and that to grasp the principle of any one
virtue will be impossible to one who has not seized that which underlies
the rest, and that the man who shows one virtue in his character will
necessarily show them all. Therefore, by contraries, the depravation of
anything in our moral nature will extend to the whole virtuous life; and in
very truth, as the Apostle tells us, the whole is affected by the parts,
and "if one member(2) suffer, all the members suffer with it," "if one be
honoured, all rejoice."
CHAPTER XV.
BUT the ways in our life which turn aside towards sin are innumerable;
and their number is told by Scripture in divers manners. "Many are they
that trouble me and persecute," and "Many are they that fight against me
from on high(3)"; and many other texts like that. We may affirm, indeed,
absolutely, that many are they who plot in the adulterer's fashion to
destroy this truly honourable marriage, and to defile this inviolate bed;
and if we must name them one by one, we charge with this adulterous spirit
anger, avarice, envy, revenge, enmity, malice, hatred, and whatever the
Apostle puts in the class of those things which are contrary to sound
doctrine. Now let us suppose a lady, prepossessing and lovely above her
peers, and on that account wedded to a king, but besieged because of her
beauty by profligate lovers. As long as she remains indignant at these
would-be seducers and complains of them to her lawful husband, she keeps
her chastity and has no one before her eyes but her bridegroom; the
profligates find no vantage ground for their attack upon her. But if she
were to listen to a single one of them, her chastity with regard to the
rest would not exempt her from the retribution; it would he sufficient to
condemn her, that she had allowed that one to defile the marriage bed. So
the soul whose life is in God will find her pleasure(4) in no single one of
those things which make a beauteous show to deceive her. If she were, in
some. fit of weakness, to admit the defilement to her heart, she would
herself have broken the covenant of her spiritual marriage; and, as the
Scripture tells us, "into the malicious soul Wisdom cannot come(5)." It
may, in a word, be truly said that the Good Husband cannot come to dwell
with the soul that is irascible, or malice-bearing, or harbours any other
disposition which jars with that concord. No way has been discovered of
harmonizing things whose nature is antagonistic and which have nothing in
common. The Apostle tells us there is "no communion of light with
darkness(6)," or of righteousness with iniquity, or, in a word, of all the
qualities which we perceive and name as the essence of God's nature, with
all the opposite which are perceived in evil. Seeing, then, the
impossibility of any union between mutual repellents, we understand that
the vicious soul is estranged from entertaining the company of the Good.
What then is the practical lesson from this? The chaste and thoughtful
virgin must sever herself from any affection which can in any way impart
contagion to her soul; she must keep herself pure for the Husband who has
married her, "not having spot or blemish or any such thing(7)."
CHAPTER XVI.
THERE is only one right path. It is narrow and contracted. It has no
turnings either on the one side or the other. No matter how we leave it,
there is the same danger of straying hopelessly away. This being so, the
habit which many have got into must be as far as possible corrected; those,
I mean, who while they fight strenuously against the baser pleasures, yet
still go on hunting for pleasure m the shape of worldly honour and
positions which will gratify their love of power. They act like some
domestic who longed for liberty, but instead of exerting himself to get
away from slavery proceeded only to change his masters, and thought liberty
consisted in that change. But all alike are slaves, even though they should
not all go on being ruled by the same masters, as long as a dominion of any
sort, with power to enforce it, is set over them. There are others again
who after a long battle against all the pleasures(8), yield themselves
easily on another field, where feelings of an opposite kind come in; and in
the intense exactitude of their lives fall a ready prey to melancholy and
irritation, and to brooding over injuries, and to everything that is the
direct opposite of pleasurable feelings; from which they are very reluctant
to extricate themselves. This is always happening, whenever any emotion,
instead of virtuous reason, controls the course of a life. For the
commandment of the Lord is exceedingly far-shining, so as to "enlighten the
eyes" even of "the simple(9)," declaring that good cleaveth only unto God.
But God is not pain any more than He is pleasure; He is not cowardice any
more than boldness; He is not fear, nor anger, nor any other emotion which
sways the untutored soul, but, as the Apostle says, He is Very Wisdom and
Sanctification, Truth and Joy and Peace, and everything like that. If He is
such, how can any one be said to cleave to Him, who is mastered by the very
opposite? Is it not want of reason in any one to suppose that when he has
striven successfully to escape the dominion of one particular passion, he
will find virtue in its opposite? For instance, to suppose that when he has
escaped pleasure, he will find virtue in letting pain have possession of
him; or when he has by an effort remained proof against anger, in crouching
with fear. It matters not whether we miss virtue, or rather God Himself Who
is the Sum of virtue, in this way, or in that. Take the case of great
bodily prostration; one would say that the sadness of this failure was just
the same, whether the cause has been excessive under-feeding, or immoderate
eating; both failures to stop in time end in the same result. He therefore
who watches over the life and the sanity of the soul will confine himself
to the moderation of the truth; he will continue without touching either of
those opposite states which run along-side virtue. This teaching is not
mine; it comes from the Divine lips. It is clearly contained in that
passage where our Lord says to His disciples, that they are as sheep
wandering amongst wolves(1), yet are not to be as doves only, but are to
have something of the serpent too in their disposition; and that means that
they should neither carry to excess the practice of that which seems
praiseworthy in simplicity(2), as such a habit would come very near to
downright madness, nor on the other hand should deem the cleverness which
most admire to be a virtue, while unsoftened by any mixture with its
opposite; they were in fact to form another disposition, by a compound of
these two seeming opposites, cutting off its silliness from the one, its
evil cunning from the other; so that one single beautiful character should
be created from the two, a union of simplicity of purpose with shrewdness.
"Be ye," He says, "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
CHAPTER XVII.
LET that which was then said by our Lord be the general maxim for every
life; especially let it be the maxim for those who are coming nearer God
through the gateway of virginity, that they should never in watching for a
perfection in one direction present an unguarded side in another and
contrary one; but should in all directions realize the good, so that they
may guarantee in all things their holy life against failure. A soldier does
not arm himself only on some points, leaving the rest of his body to take
its chance unprotected. If he were to receive his death-wound upon that,
what would have been the advantage of this partial armour? Again, who would
call that feature faultless, which from some accident had lost one of those
requisites which go to make up the sum of beauty? The disfigurement of the
mutilated part mars the grace of the part untouched. The Gospel implies
that he who undertakes the building of a tower, but spends all his labour
upon the foundations without ever reaching the completion, is worthy of
ridicule; and what else do we learn from the Parable of the Tower, but to
strive to come to the finish of every lofty purpose, accomplishing the work
of God in all the multiform structures of His commandments? One stone,
indeed, is no more the whole edifice of the Tower, than one commandment
kept will raise the soul's perfection to the required height. The
foundation must by all means first be laid but over it, as the Apostle
says(3), the edifice of gold and precious gems must be built; for so is the
doing of the commandment put by the Prophet who cries, "I have loved Thy
commandment above gold and many a precious stone(4)." Let the virtuous life
have for its substructure the love of virginity; but upon this let every
result of virtue be reared. If virginity is believed to be a vastly
precious thing and to have a divine look (as indeed is the case, as well as
men believe of it), yet, if the whole life does not harmonize with this
perfect note, and it be marred by the succeeding s discord of the soul,
this thing becomes but "the jewel of gold in the swine's snout(6)," or "the
pearl that is trodden under the swine's feet." But we have said enough upon
this.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IF any one supposes that(7) this want of mutual harmony between his
life and a single one of its circumstances is quite unimportant, let him be
taught the meaning of our maxim by looking at the management of a house.
The master of a private dwelling will not allow any untidiness or
unseemliness to be seen in the house, such as a couch upset, or the table
littered with rubbish, or vessels of price thrown away into dirty corners,
while those which serve ignobler uses are thrust forward for entering
guests to see. He has everything arranged neatly and in the proper place,
where it stands to most advantage; and then he can welcome his guests,
without any misgivings that he be ashamed of opening the interior of his
house to receive them. The same duty, I take it, is incumbent on that
master of our "tabernacle," the mind; it has to arrange everything within
us, and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator has
fashioned to be our implement or our vessel, to fitting and noble uses. We
will now mention in detail the way in which any one might manage his life,
with its present advantages, to his improvement, hoping that no one will
accuse us of trifling(8), or over-minuteness. We advise, then, that love's
passion be placed in the soul's purest shrine, as a thing chosen to be the
first fruits of all our gifts, and devoted(9) entirely to God; and when
once this has been done, to keep it untouched and unsullied by any secular
defilement. Then indignation, and anger, and hatred must be as watch-dogs
to be roused only against attacking sins; they must follow their natural
impulse only against the thief and the enemy who is creeping in to plunder
the divine treasure-chamber, and who comes only for that, that he may
steal, and mangle, and destroy. Courage and confidence are to be weapons in
our hands to baffle any sudden surprise and attack of the wicked who
advance. Hope and patience are to be the staffs to lean upon, whenever we
are weary with the trials of the world. As for sorrow, we must have a stock
of it ready to apply, if need should happen to arise for it, in the hour of
repentance for our sins; believing at the same time that it is never
useful, except to minister to that. Righteousness will be our rule of
straightforwardness, guarding us from stumbling either in word or deed, and
guiding us in the disposal of the faculties of our soul, as well as in the
due consideration for every one we meet. The love of gain, which is a
large, incalculably large, element in every soul, when once applied to the
desire for God, will bless the man who has it; for he will be violent z
where it is right to be violent. Wisdom and prudence will be our advisers
as to our best interests; they will order our lives so as never to suffer
from any thoughtless folly. But suppose a man does not apply the aforesaid
faculties of the soul to their proper use, but reverses their intended
purpose; suppose he wastes his love upon the basest objects, and stores up
his hatred only for his own kinsmen; suppose he welcomes iniquity, plays
the man only against his parents, is bold only in absurdities, fixes his
hopes on emptiness, chases prudence and wisdom from his company, takes
gluttony and folly for his mistresses, and uses all his other opportunities
in the same fashion, he would indeed be a strange and unnatural character
to a degree beyond any one's power to express. If we could imagine any one
putting his armour on all the wrong way, reversing the helmet so as to
cover his face while the plume nodded backward, putting his feet into the
cuirass, and fitting the greaves on to his breast, changing to the right
side all that ought to go on the left and vice versa, and how such a
hoplite would be likely to fare in battle, then we should have an idea of
the fate in life which is sure to await him whose confused judgment makes
him reverse the proper uses of his soul's faculties. We must therefore
provide this balance in all feeling; the true sobriety of mind is naturally
able to supply it; and if one had to find an exact definition of this
sobriety, one might declare absolutely, that it amounts to our ordered
control, by dint of wisdom and prudence, over every emotion of the soul.
Moreover, such a condition in the soul will be no longer in need of any
laborious method to attain to the high and heavenly realities; it will
accomplish with the greatest ease that which erewhile seemed so
unattainable; it will grasp the object of its search as a natural
consequence of rejecting the opposite attractions. A man who comes out of
darkness is necessarily in the light; a man who is not dead is necessarily
alive. Indeed, if a man is not to have received his soul to no purpose(2),
he will certainly be upon the path of truth; the prudence and the science
employed to guard against error will be itself a sure guidance along the
right road. Slaves who have been freed and cease to serve their former
masters, the very moment they become their own masters, direct all their
thoughts towards themselves so, I take it, the soul which has been freed
from ministering to the body becomes at once cognizant of its own inherent
energy. But this liberty consists, as we learn from the Apostle(3), in not
again being held in the yoke of slavery, and in not being bound again, like
a runaway or a criminal, with the fetters of marriage. But I must return
here to what I said at first; that the perfection of this liberty does not
consist only in that one point of abstaining from marriage. Let no one
suppose that the prize of virginity is so insignificant and so easily won
as that; as if one little observance of the flesh could settle so vital a
matter. But we have seen that every man who doeth a sin is the servant of
sin(4); so that a declension towards vice in any act, or in any practice
whatever, makes a slave, and still more, a branded slave, of the man,
covering him through sin's lashes with bruises and seared spots. Therefore
it behoves the man who grasps at the transcendent aim of all virginity to
be true to himself in h every respect, and to manifest his purity equally c
in every relation of his life. If any of the inspired words are required to
aid our pleading, the Truth s Itself will be sufficient to corroborate the
truth when It inculcates this very kind of teaching in the veiled meaning
of a Gospel Parable: the good and eatable fish are separated by the
fishers' skill from the bad and poisonous fish, so that the enjoyment of
the good should not be spoilt by any of the bad getting into the "vessels"
with them. The work of true sobriety is the same; from all pursuits and
habits to choose that which is pure and improving, rejecting in every case
that which does not seem likely to be useful, and letting it go back into
the universal and secular life, called "the sea(6)," in the imagery of the
Parable. The Psalmist(7) also, when expounding the doctrine of a full
confession(8), calls this restless suffering tumultuous life, "waters
coming in even unto the soul," "depths of waters," and a "hurricane"; in
which sea indeed every rebellious thought sinks, as the Egyptian did, with
a stone's weight into the deeps(9). But all in us that is dear to God, and
has a piercing insight into the truth (called "Israel" in the narrative),
passes, but that alone, over that sea as if it were dry land, and is never
reached by the bitterness and the brine of life's billows. Thus, typically,
under the leadership of the Law (for Moses was a type of the Law that was
coming) Israel passes unwetted over that sea, while the Egyptian who
crosses in her track is overwhelmed. Each fares according to the
disposition which he carries with him; one walks lightly enough, the other
is dragged into the deep water. For virtue is a light and buoyant thing,
and all who live in her way "fly like clouds(1)," as Isaiah says, "and as
doves with their young ones"; but sin is a heavy affair, "sitting," as
another of the prophets says, "upon a talent of lead(2)." If, however, this
reading of the history appears to any forced and inapplicable, and the
miracle at the Red Sea does not present itself to him as written for our
profit, let him listen to the Apostle: "Now all these things happened unto
them for types, and they are written for our admonition(3)."
CHAPTER XIX.
BUT besides other things the action of Miriam the prophetess also gives
rise to these surmisings of ours. Directly the sea was crossed she took in
her hand a dry and sounding timbrel and conducted the women's dance(4). By
this timbrel the story may mean to imply virginity, as first perfected by
Miriam; whom indeed I would believe to be a type of Mary the mother of
God(5). Just as the timbrel emits a loud sound because it is devoid of all
moisture and reduced to the highest degree of dryness, so has virginity a
clear and ringing report amongst men because it repels from itself the
vital sap of merely physical life. Thus, Miriam's timbrel being a dead
thing, and virginity being a deadening of the bodily passions, it is
perhaps not very far removed from the bounds of probability(6) that Miriam
was a virgin. However, we can but guess and surmise, we cannot clearly
prove, that this was so, and that Miriam the prophetess led a dance of
virgins, even though many of the learned have affirmed distinctly that she
was unmarried, from the fact that the history makes no mention either of
her marriage or of her being a mother; and surely she would have been named
and known, not as "the sister of Aaron(7)," but from her husband, if she
had had one; since the head of the woman is not the brother but the
husband. But if, amongst a people with whom motherhood was sought after and
classed as a blessing and, regarded as a public duty, the grace of
virginity, nevertheless came to be regarded as a precious thing, how does
it behove us to feel towards it, who do not "judge" of the Divine
blessings(8) "according to the flesh"? Indeed it has been revealed in the
oracles of God, on what occasion to conceive and to bring forth is a good
thing, and what species of fecundity was desired by God's saints; for both
the Prophet Isaiah and the divine Apostle have made this clear and certain.
The one cries, "From fear of Thee, O Lord, have I conceived(9);" the other
boasts that he is the parent of the largest family of any, bringing to the
birth whole cities and nations; not the Corinthians and Galatians only whom
by his travailings he moulded for the Lord, but all in the wide circuit
from Jerusalem to Illyricum; his children filled the world, "begotten" by
him in Christ through the Gospel(1). In the same strain the womb of the
Holy Virgin, which ministered to an Immaculate Birth, is pronounced blessed
in the Gospel(2); for that birth did not annul the Virginity, nor did the
Virginity impede so great a birth. When the "spirit of salvation(3)," as
Isaiah names it, is being born, the willings of the flesh are useless.
There is also a particular teaching of the Apostle, which harmonizes with
this; viz. each man of us is a double man(4); one the outwardly visible,
whose natural fate it is to decay; the other perceptible only in the secret
of the heart, yet capable of renovation. If this teaching is true,--and it
must be true s because Wisdom is speaking there,--then there is no
absurdity in supposing a double marriage also which answers in every detail
to either man; and, maybe, if one was to assert boldly that the body's
virginity was the co-operator and the agent of the inward marriage, this
assertion would not be much beside the probable fact.
CHAPTER XX.
Now it is impossible, as far as manual exercise goes, to ply two arts
at once; for instance, husbandry and sailing, or tinkering and
carpentering. If one is to be honestly taken in hand, the other must be
left alone. Just so, there are these two marriages for our choice, the one
effected in the flesh, the other in the spirit; and preoccupation m the one
must cause of necessity alienation from the other. No more is the eye able
to look at two objects at once; but it must concentrate its special
attention on one at a time; no more can the tongue effect utterances in two
different languages, so as to pronounce, for instance, a Hebrew word and a
Greek word in the same moment: no more can the ear take in at one and the
same time a narrative of facts, and a hortatory discourse; if each special
tone is heard separately, it will impress its ideas upon the hearers'
minds; but if they are combined and so poured into the ear, an inextricable
confusion of ideas will be the result, one meaning being mutually lost in
the other: and no more, by analogy, do our emotional powers possess a
nature which can at once pursue the pleasures of sense and court the
spiritual union; nor, besides, can both those ends be gained by the same
courses of life; continence, mortification of the passions, scorn of
fleshly needs, are the agents of the one union; but all that are the
reverse of these are the agents of bodily habitation. As, when two masters
are before us to choose between, and we cannot be subject to both, for "no
man can serve two masters(6)," he who is wise will choose the one most
useful to himself, so, when two marriages are before us to choose between,
and we cannot contract both, for "he that is unmarried cares for the things
of the Lord, but he that is married careth for the things of the world(7),"
I repeat that it would be the aim of a sound mind not to miss choosing the
more profitable one; and not to be ignorant either of the way which will
lead it to this, a way which cannot be learnt but by some such comparison
as the following. In the case of a marriage of this world a man who is
anxious to avoid appearing altogether insignificant pays the greatest
attention both to physical health, and becoming adornment, and amplitude of
means and the security from any disgraceful revelations as to his
antecedents or his parentage; for so he thinks things will be most likely
to turn out as he wishes. Now just in the same way the man who is courting
the spiritual alliance will first of all display himself, by the renewal of
his mind(8), a young man, without a single touch of age upon him; next he
will reveal a lineage rich in that in which it is a noble ambition to be
rich, not priding himself on worldly wealth, but luxuriating only in the
heavenly treasures. As for family distinction, he will not vaunt that which
comes by the mere routine of devolution even to numbers of the worthless,
but that which is gained by the successful efforts of his own zeal and
labours; a distinction which only those can boast of who are "sons of the
light" and children of God, and are styled "nobles from the sunrise(9)"
because of their splendid deeds. Strength and health he will not try to
gain by bodily training and feeding, but by all that is the contrary of
this, perfecting the spirit's strength in the body's weakness. I could tell
also of the suitor's gifts to the bride in such a wedding(1); they are not
procured by the money that perishes, but are contributed out of the wealth
peculiar to the soul. Would you know their names? You must hear from Paul,
that excellent adorner of the Bride(2), in what the wealth of those
consists who in everything commend themselves. He mentions much else that
is priceless in it, and adds, "in chastity(3)"; and besides this all the
recognized fruits of the spirit from any quarter whatever are gifts of this
marriage. If a man is going to carry out the advice of Solomon and take for
helpmate and life-companion that true Wisdom of which he says, "Love her,
and she shall keep thee," "honour her, that she may embrace thee(4)," then
he will prepare himself in a manner worthy of such a love, so as to feast
with all the joyous wedding guests in spotless raiment, and not be cast
forth, while claiming to sit at that feast, for not having put on the
wedding garment. It is plain moreover that the argument applies equally to
men and women, to move them towards such a marriage. "There is neither male
nor female(5)," the Apostle says; "Christ is all, and in all(6)"; and so it
is equally reasonable that he who is enamoured of wisdom should hold the
Object of his passionate desire, Who is the True Wisdom; and that the soul
which cleaves to the undying Bridegroom should have the fruition of her
love for the true Wisdom, which is God. We have now sufficiently revealed
the nature of the spiritual union, and the Object of the pure and heavenly
Love.
CHAPTER XXI.
IT is perfectly clear that no one can come near the purity of the
Divine Being who has not first himself become such; he must therefore place
between himself and the pleasures of the senses a high strong wall of
separation, so that in this his approach to the Deity the purity of his own
heart may not become soiled again. Such an impregnable wall will be found
in a complete estrangement from everything wherein passion operates.
Now pleasure is one in kind, as we learn from the experts; as water
parted into various channels from one single fountain, it spreads itself
over the pleasure-lover through the various avenues of the senses; so that
it has been on his heart that the man, who through any one particular
sensation succumbs to the resulting pleasure, has received a wound from
that sensation. This accords with the teaching given from the Divine lips,
that "he who has satisfied the lust of the eyes has received the mischief
already in his heart(7)"; for I take it that our Lord was speaking in that
particular example of any of the senses; so that we might well carry on His
saying, and add, "He who hath heard, to lust after," and what follows, "He
who hath touched to lust after," "He who hath lowered any faculty within us
to the service of pleasure, hath sinned in his heart."
To prevent this, then, we want to apply to our own lives that rule of
all temperance, never to let the mind dwell on anything wherein pleasure's
bait is hid; but above all to be specially watchful against the pleasure of
taste. For that seems in a way the most deeply rooted, and to be the mother
as it were of all forbidden enjoyment. The pleasures of eating and
drinking, leading to boundless excess, inflict upon the body the doom of
the most dreadful sufferings(8); for over-indulgence is the parent of most
of the painful diseases. To secure for the body a continuous tranquillity,
unstirred by the pains of surfeit, we must make up our minds to a more
sparing regimen, and constitute the need of it on each occasion not the
pleasure of it, as the measure and limit of our indulgence. If the
sweetness will nevertheless mingle itself with the satisfaction of the need
(for hunger knows how to sweeten everything(9), and by the vehemence of
appetite she gives the zest of pleasure to every discoverable supply of the
need), we must not because of the resulting enjoyment reject the
satisfaction, nor yet make this latter our leading aim. In everything we
must select the expedient quantity, and leave untouched what merely feasts
the senses(1).
CHAPTER XXII.
WE see how the husbandmen have a method for separating the chaff, which
is united with the wheat, with a view to employ each for its proper
purpose, the one for the sustenance of man, the other for burning and the
feeding of animals. The labourer in the field of temperance will in like
manner distinguish the satisfaction from the mere delight, and will fling
this latter nature to savages(2) "whose end is to be burned(3)," as the
Apostle says, but will take the other, in proportion to the actual need,
with thankfulness, Many, however, slide into the very opposite kind of
excess, and unconsciously to themselves, in their over-preciseness,
laboriously thwart their own design; they let their soul fall down the
other side from the heights of Divine elevation to the level of dull
thoughts and occupations, where their minds are so bent upon regulations
which merely affect the body, that they can no longer walk in their
heavenly freedom and gaze above; their only inclination is to this
tormenting and afflicting of the flesh. It would be well, then, to give
this also careful thought, so as to be equally on our guard against either
over-amount(4), neither stifling the mind beneath the wound of the flesh,
nor, on the other hand, by gratuitously inflicted weakenings sapping and
lowering the powers, so that it can have no thought but of the body's
pain(5); and let every one remember that wise precept, which warns us from
turning to the right hand or to the left. I have heard a certain physician
of my acquaintance, in the course of explaining the secrets of his art, say
that our body consists of four elements, not of the same species, but
disposed to be conflicting: yet the hot penetrated the cold, and an equally
unexpected union of the wet and the dry took place, the contradictories of
each pair being brought into contact by their relationship to the
intervening pair. He added an extremely subtle explanation of this account
of his studies in nature. Each of these elements was in its essence
diametrically(6) opposed to its contradictory; but then it had two other
qualities lying on each side of it, and by virtue of its kinship with them
it came into contact with its contradictory; for example, the cold and the
hot each unite with the wet, or the dry; and again, the wet and the dry
each unite with the hot, or the cold: and so this sameness of quality, when
it manifests itself in contradictories, is itself the agent which affects
the union of those contradictories. What business of mine, however, is it
to explain exactly the details of this change from this mutual separation
and repugnance of nature, to this mutual union through the medium of
kindred qualities, except for the purpose for which we mentioned it? And
that purpose was to add that the author of this analysis of the body's
constitution advised that all possible care be taken to preserve a balance
between these properties, for that in fact health consisted in not letting
any one of them gain the mastery within us. If his doctrine has truth in
it, then, for our health's continuance, we must secure such a habit, and by
no irregularity of diet produce either an excess or a defect in any member
of these our constituent elements. The chariot-master, if the young horses
which he has to drive will not work well together, does not urge a fast one
with the whip, and rein in a slow one; nor, again, does he let a horse that
shies in the traces or is hard-mouthed gallop his own way to the confusion
of orderly driving; but he quickens the pace of the first, checks the
second, reaches the third with cuts of his whip, till he has made them all
breathe evenly together in a straight career. Now our mind in like manner
holds in its grasp the reins of this chariot of the body; and in that
capacity it will not devise, in the time of youth, when heat of temperament
is abundant, ways of heightening that fever; nor will it multiply the
cooling and the thinning things when the body is already chilled by illness
or by time; and in the case of all these physical qualities it will be
guided by the Scripture, so as actually to realize it: "He that gathered
much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack(7)." It
will curtail immoderate lengths in either direction, and so will be careful
to replenish where there is much lack. The inefficiency of the body from
either cause will be that which it guards against; it will train the flesh,
neither making it wild and ungovernable by excessive pampering, nor sickly
and unstrung and nerveless for the required work by immoderate
mortification. That is temperance's highest aim; it looks not to the
afflicting of the body, but to the peaceful action of the soul's functions.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Now the details of the life of him who has chosen to live in such a
philosophy as this, the things to be avoided, the exercises to be engaged
in, the rules of temperance, the whole method of the training, and all the
daily regimen which contributes towards this great end, has been dealt with
in certain written manuals of instruction for the benefit of those who love
details. Yet there is a plainer guide to be found than verbal instruction;
and that is practice: and there is nothing vexatious in the maxim that when
we are undertaking a long journey or voyage we should get an instructor.
"But," says the Apostle(3), "the word is nigh thee;" the grace begins at
home; there is the manufactory of all the virtues; there this life has
become exquisitely refined by a continual progress towards consummate
perfection; there, whether men are silent or whether they speak, there is
large opportunity for being instructed in this heavenly citizenship through
the actual practice of it. Any theory divorced from living examples,
however admirably it may be dressed out, is like the unbreathing statue,
with its show of a blooming complexion impressed in tints and colours; but
the man who acts as well as teaches, as the Gospel tells us, he is the man
who is truly living, and has the bloom of beauty, and is efficient and
stirring. It is to him that we must go, if we mean, according to the
saying(9) of Scripture, to "retain" virginity. One who wants to learn a
foreign language is not a competent instructor of himself; he gets himself
taught by experts, and can then talk with foreigners. So, for this high
life, which does not advance in nature's groove, but is estranged from her
by the novelty of its course, a man cannot be instructed thoroughly unless
he puts himself into the hands of one who has himself led it in perfection;
and indeed in all the other professions of life the candidate is more
likely to achieve success if he gets from tutors a scientific knowledge of
each part of the subject of his choice, than if he undertook to study it by
himself; and this particular profession(1) is not one where everything is
so clear that judgment as to our best course in it is necessarily left to
ourselves; it is one where to hazard a step into the unknown at once brings
us into danger. The science of medicine once did not exist; it has come
into being by the experiments which men have made, and has gradually been
revealed through their various observations; the healing and the harmful
drug became known from the attestation of those who had tried them, and
this distinction was adopted into the theory of the art, so that the close
observation of former practitioners became a precept for those who
succeeded; and now any one who studies to attain this art is under no
necessity to ascertain at his own peril the power of any drug, whether it
be a poison or a medicine; he has only to learn from others the known
facts, and may than practise with success. It is so also with that medicine
of the soul, philosophy, from which we learn the remedy for every weakness
that can touch the soul. We need not hunt after a knowledge of these
remedies by dint of guess-work and surmisings; we have abundant means of
learning them from him who by a long and rich experience has gained the
possession which we seek. In any matter youth is generally a giddy(2)
guide; and it would not be easy to find anything of importance succeeding,
in which gray hairs have not been called in to share in the deliberations.
Even in all other undertakings we must, in proportion to their greater
importance, take the more precaution against failure; for in them too the
thoughtless designs of youth have brought loss; on property, for instance;
or have compelled the surrender of a position in the world, and even of
renown. But in this mighty and sublime ambition it is not property, or
secular glory lasting for its hour, or any external fortune, that is at
stake;--of such things(3), whether they settle themselves well or the
reverse, the wise take small account ;--here rashness can affect the soul
itself; and we run the awful hazard, not of losing any of those other
things whose recovery even may perhaps be possible, but of ruining our very
selves and making the soul a bankrupt. A man who has spent or lost his
patrimony does not despair, as long as he is in the land of the living, of
perchance coming again through contrivances into his former competence; but
the man who has ejected himself from this calling, deprives himself as well
of all hope of a return to better things. Therefore, since most embrace
virginity while still young and unformed in understanding, this before
anything else should be their employment, to search out a fitting guide and
master of this way, lest, in their present ignorance, they should wander
from the direct route, and strike out new paths of their own in trackless
wilds(4). "Two are better than one," says the Preacher(5); but a single one
is easily vanquished by the foe who infests the path which leads to God;
and verily "woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not
another to help him up(6)." Some ere now in their enthusiasm for the
stricter life have shown a dexterous alacrity; but, as if in the very
moment of their choice they had already touched perfection, their pride has
had a shocking fall(7), and they have been tripped up from madly deluding
themselves into thinking that that to which their own mind inclined them
was the true beauty. In this number are those whom Wisdom calls the
"slothful ones(8)," who bestrew their "way" with "thorns"; who think it a
moral loss to be anxious about keeping the commandments; who erase from
their own minds the Apostolic teaching, and instead of eating the bread of
their own honest earning fix on that of others, and make their idleness
itself into an art of living. From this number, too, come the Dreamers, who
put more faith in the illusions of their dreams(9) than in the Gospel
teaching, and style their own phantasies "revelations." Hence, too, those
who "creep into the houses "; and again others who suppose virtue to
consist in savage bearishness, and have never known the fruits of long-
suffering and humility of spirit. Who could enumerate all the pitfalls into
which any one might slip, from refusing to have recourse to men of godly
celebrity? Why, we have known ascetics of this class who have persisted in
their fasting even unto death, as if "with such sacrifices God were well
pleased(1);" and, again, others who rush off into the extreme diametrically
opposite, practising celibacy in name only and leading a life in no way
different from the secular; for they not only indulge in the pleasures of
the table, but are openly known to have a woman in their houses(2); and
they call such a friendship a brotherly affection, as if, forsooth, they
could veil their own thought, which is inclined to evil, under a sacred
term. It is owing to them that this pure and holy profession of virginity
is "blasphemed amongst the Gentiles(3)."
CHAPTER XXIV.
IT would therefore be to their profit, for the young to refrain from
laying down(4) for themselves their future course in this profession; and
indeed, examples of holy lives for them to follow are not wanting in the
living generation(5). Now, if ever before, saintliness abounds and
penetrates our world; by gradual advances it has reached the highest mark
of perfectness; and one who follows such footsteps in his daily rounds may
catch this halo; one who tracks the scent of this preceding perfume may be
drenched in the sweet odours of Christ Himself. As, when one torch has been
fired, flame is transmitted to all the neighbouring candlesticks, without
either the first light being lessened or blazing with unequal brilliance on
the other points where it has been caught; so the saintliness of a life is
transmitted from him who has achieved it, to those who come within his
circle; for there is truth in the Prophet's saying(6), that one who lives
with a man who is "holy" and "clean" and "elect," will become such himself.
If you would wish to know the sure signs, which will secure you the real
model, it is not hard to take a sketch from life. If you see a man so
standing between death and life, as to select from each helps for the
contemplative course, never letting death's stupor paralyze his zeal to
keep all the commandments, nor yet placing both feet in the world of the
living, since he has weaned himself from secular ambitions;--a man who
remains more insensate than the dead themselves to everything that is found
on examination to be living for the flesh, but instinct with life and
energy and strength in the achievements of virtue, which are the sure marks
of the spiritual life;--then look to that man for the rule of your life;
let him be the leading light of your course of devotion, as the
constellations that never set are to the pilot; imitate his youth and his
gray hairs: or, rather, imitate the old man and the stripling who are
joined in him; for even now in his declining years time has not blunted the
keen activity of his soul, nor was his youth active in the sphere of
youth's well-known employments; in both seasons of life he has shown a
wonderful combination of opposites, or rather an exchange of the peculiar
qualities of each; for in age he shows, in the direction of the good, a
young man's energy, while, in the hours of youth, in the direction of evil,
his passions were powerless. If you wish to know what were the passions of
that glorious youth of his, you will have for your imitation the intensity
and glow of his godlike love of wisdom, which grew with him from his
childhood, and has continued with him into his old age. But if you cannot
gaze upon him, as the weak-sighted cannot gaze upon the sun, at all events
watch that band of holy men who are ranged beneath him, and who by the
illumination of their lives are a model for this age. God has placed them
as a beacon for us who live around; many among them have been young men
there in their prime, and have grown gray in the unbroken practice of
continence and temperance; they were old in reasonableness before their
time, and in character outstripped their years. The only love they tasted
was that of wisdom; not that their natural instincts were different from
the rest; for in all alike "the flesh lusteth against the spirit(7);" but
they listened to some purpose to him who said that Temperance "is a tree of
life to them that lay hold upon her(8);" and they sailed across the
swelling billows of existence upon this tree of life, as upon a skiff; and
anchored in the haven of the will of God; enviable now after so fair a
voyage, they rest their souls in that sunny cloudless calm. They now ride
safe themselves at the anchor of a good hope, far out of reach of the
tumult of the billows; and for others who will follow they radiate the
splendour of their lives as beacon-fires on some high watch-tower. We have
indeed a mark to guide us safely over the ocean of temptations; and why
make the too curious inquiry, whether some with such thoughts as these have
not fallen nevertheless, and why therefore despair, as if the achievement
was beyond your reach? Look on him who has succeeded, and boldly launch
upon the voyage with confidence that it will be prosperous, and sail on
under the breeze of the Holy Spirit with Christ your pilot and with the
oarage of good cheer(9). For those who "go down to the sea in ships and
occupy their business in great waters" do not let the shipwreck that has
befallen some one else prevent their being of good cheer; they rather
shield their hearts in this very, confidence, and so sweep on to accomplish
their successful feat. Surely it is the most absurd thing in the world to
reprobate him who has slipped in a course which requires the greatest
nicety, while one considers those who all their lives have been growing old
in failures and in errors, to have chosen the better part. If one single
approach to sin is such an awful thing that you deem it safer not to take
in hand at all this loftier aim, how much more awful a thing it is to make
sin the practice of a whole life, and to remain thereby absolutely ignorant
of the purer course! How can you in your full life obey the Crucified? How
can you, hale in sin, obey Him Who died to sin? How can you, who are not
crucified to the world, and will not accept the mortification of the flesh,
obey Him Who bids you follow after Him, and Who bore the Cross in His own
body, as a trophy from the foe? How can you obey Paul when he exhorts you
"to present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God(1),"
when you are "conformed to this world," and not transformed by the renewing
of your mind, when you are not "walking" in this "newness of life," but
still pursuing the routine of "the old man"? How can you be a priest unto
God(2), anointed though you are for this very office, to offer a gift to
God; a gift in no way another's, no counterfeited gift from sources outside
yourself, but a gift that is really your own, namely, "the inner man(3),"
who must be perfect and blameless, as it is required of a lamb to be
without spot or blemish? How can you offer this to God, when you do not
listen to the law forbidding the unclean to offer sacrifices? If you long
for God to manifest Himself to you, why do you not hear Moses, when he
commands the people to be pure from the stains of marriage, that they may
take in the vision of God(4)? If this all seems little in your eyes, to be
crucified with Christ, to present yourself a sacrifice to God, to become a
priest unto the most high God, to make yourself worthy of the vision of the
Almighty, what higher blessings than these can we imagine for you, if
indeed you make light of the consequences of these as well? And the
consequence of being crucified with Christ is that we shall live with Him,
and be glorified with Him, and reign with Him; and the consequence of
presenting ourselves to God is that we shall be changed from the rank of
human nature and human dignity to that of Angels; for so speaks Daniel,
that "thousand thousands stood before him(5)." He too who has taken his
share in the true priesthood and placed himself beside the Great High
Priest remains altogether himself a priest for ever, prevented for eternity
from remaining any more in death. To say, again, that one makes oneself
worthy to see God, produces no less a result than this; that one is made
worthy to see God. Indeed, the crown of every hope, and of every desire, of
every blessing, and of every promise of God, and of all those unspeakable
delights which we believe to exist beyond our perception and our
knowledge,--the crowning result of them all, I say, is this. Moses longed
earnestly to see it, and many prophets and kings have desired to see the
same: but the only class deemed worthy of it are the pure in heart, those
who are, and are named "blessed," for this very reason, that "they shall
see God(6)." Wherefore we would that you too should become crucified with
Christ, a holy priest standing before God, a pure offering in all chastity,
preparing yourself by your own holiness for God's coming; that you also may
have a pure heart in which to see God, according to the promise of God, and
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF II/V, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The
Electronic
Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.
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